Book 1: Magic Kingdom Come
by ReverendKilljoy
Summary: AU S5 . Josh and Donna go to Florida to see a Senator and save Amtrak. Romance, sightseeing and special guest stars. Slight intrigue, comedy in the happiest place on earth. Plus, there's a monorai- everyone loves a monorail!
1. Tuesday Morning

Disclaimers:

Based wholly or partly on characters and situations created by Aaron Sorkin, Thomas Schlamme, John Wells, NBC, Warner Brothers Television Production Inc., and who knows what others. Rated R: An unauthorized work of speculative fiction with adult situations and strong sexual content, graphic language, brief nudity and mature themes. Parental discretion is advised. Do not distribute for profit or without notification. Not to be taken internally. No user serviceable parts inside. Made in the USA. I wouldn't stop for red lights. Strongest fan fiction available without a prescription. May cause dizziness, dry mouth or nausea. Do not read my fanfics while driving, drinking or operating heavy machinery. I'm ReverendKilljoy and I approved this Disclaimer.

Note: AU set some time in Season 5, pre-CODEL trip. Spoilers for Season 1-4+

W.W.

"Donna!"

The yell was clipped, precise, practiced. It was impossible that she could be at her desk and not hear it. It was unlikely anyone beyond the bullpen or the opposite office could hear it over the steady buzz of the staff at work. Josh was good at this, this line. Not as good as Leo- you could place Margaret within a yard by how loud he called for her, like he could see her through the office walls. It was impressive.

"Donn- oh." She was standing in the doorway.

"You didn't answer," Josh accused her. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough to watch you shouting." No smile.

"Well then, and this is a radical thought I know, but hear me out: why didn't you answer?" It amazed Josh to think how easy it was to fly off the rails when he talked with her. How had he gotten anything done in the last seven years?

"Civilized people respond to requests, not shouts." She moved into the office but her body language did not relent, she planned on sticking it to him, he could tell.

"Lots of civilized people are looking for work, too." He decided to try working after all. "I need to take a meeting at the OEOB with Kelleher, but not Maize. Maize is always trying to piggyback and I need him out of there."

"Mmm hmmm." She pursed her lips for a moment. He wished she wouldn't do that. Despite C.J.'s assertion that Josh lived in a state of abysmal ignorance as to most of what happened around him, he wasn't stupid. He'd noticed how attractive Donna was, on more than one occasion.

"And…" Oh hell. He got looking at her lips and forgot where this was going. Normally he was a lot better at ignoring the subtext in their relationship and just getting things done.

"Josh? Do you have any clue where you were going with this?" Her eyes were bright. Okay, so maybe he was stupid. "Maize and the OEOB?"

"Right. Right! I need you to get him over to the Hill or something, just make sure he's out of the office when I call on Kelleher, ok? Set it up."

"How? Hire some goons to stuff him in a car trunk while you meet with his boss?" Her sarcasm was always so endearing, probably because she hadn't really done that before they'd worked together for a long time. Nice to know he'd had some influence.

"I imagine the DC police would have some issues with that, but if you think you can swing it…" Josh felt the little tingle under his right eye he always got when he was smiling big. He wondered if the dimple pinched a nerve or something, but it was worth it for the grin. Many a woman had wavered and fallen to the power of the dimply grin.

"I'll set the meeting for 3:30, you have a DNC conference call at 2:00, and Will wanted a few minutes to go over the new polling on the World Court findings."

"That's more like it. I'm going to talk to C.J. for a minute." As Josh passed her in the doorway, he popped her on the hip with the briefing folder in his hand. "Go get 'em, Mugsy."

That was too far. Shouldn't do the touching thing, the casual touching thing. Some people have a line, a line you don't cross. He and Donna didn't have a line like that, they didn't even have a zone, they had, well, whatever they had it shouldn't include smacking her on the hip, even if he didn't use his bare hand.

Okay, wrong thoughts. Wrong thoughts. Good thing he had a country to run and a world to save. It kept him from having time to think, which would most likely be bad. Josh decided it was time to put these thoughts back in the lock box and get back to actually running the country and saving the world.

W.W.

Later that morning, as Josh headed out from the White House, his phone started ringing. With the practiced ease of a gunslinger drawing down, he slid his phone into one hand and moved his backpack to the opposite shoulder with the other.

"Josh Lyman."

"It's me." Donna didn't say who she was. Amy had always said, "It's Amy." Josh thought Amy liked hearing her own name. Mandy, she had just started talking like he should assume no one else would ever call, like he was supposed to jump aboard her train of thought without it ever slowing down at the station. Donna just told him, "It's me," and got to work.

"So what's the plan for Maize? I need Kelleher…"

"Josh." Her voice was heavy, flat. "C.J. needs you in her office. I pushed Kelleher to tomorrow morning, before Maize is back from Treasury."

Josh stood outside the carport, squinting into a fairly clear blue sky. One thing about the view from the White House, there are no planes in the sky. Planes can't fly over or towards the White House, so it makes for the clearest urban skies in the world, not counting smog, fog, rain and frequent snows. So he was standing there when her words literally hit him from a clear blue sky.

"C.J. needs to talk to you right away, Josh." She sounded awful. Josh's heart started racing. It couldn't be the President; it would be Leo calling, or Toby. But if the President was ill or in trouble Leo might be too busy to call…

"It's about Rosslyn."

"I'll be right there." His scar itched on his chest and his mouth went dry. Son of a bitch.

W.W.

"Leo, isn't there something we can do about this?" Jed Bartlet's tone told his oldest friend that he knew the answer already. Still, they were thinking it out, talking it through. It's what they did.

"I don't believe so, Mr. President." Decades of friendship softened Leo's tone somewhat, but there was a protocol, a formality to conversations in the Oval Office. "Her sources tell C.J. that the program is going to have the usual disclaimers. Inspired by actual events, compressed for time, composite characters, whatever."

"I just don't see it. We all saw the documentaries after the shooting. We didn't all watch them, but hasn't this been pretty well played out? Why again, why now?"

"C.J. has some ideas, sir. Do we want to get them out from under the microscope for a few days?"

W.W.

"All the coverage at the time of the shooting was about the President, about Zoey and Charlie, even about the Secret Service." C.J. leaned on her desk, explaining the exciting new 'docudrama' that was coming to the network in sweeps. Josh sat on her visitor's chair, staring at her goldfish and trying to process. Donna was still hanging uncertainly in the doorway, having walked Josh from next door when he'd returned.

"This time," C.J. continued, sounding both insulted and angry, "it's not the news division putting it together, it's their features group."

"Why now?" Josh was trying to stay calm. If you'd known him for less than about five minutes, you might have bought it.

"They have a new slant. It seems that they want to tell the story from a different angle so they're going to use you."

"So what? I got shot. I had a lot of surgery that hurt a lot, and then I came back to work. I can tell you, that's going to make for must-see television. What is this gonna be, the after school special?"

Now for the hardest part, thought C.J.

"Donna, can you step in?" Josh and Donna both looked up, puzzled. Donna jumped, and stepped in. She looked pale. Not her usual alabaster fair, but more an unhealthy pale.

"I didn't mean you, Josh. Apparently," C.J. went on, "the main source for this story is one of the ICU nurses from GW. They're building the story around a character called Diane Mitchell."

"Diane Mitchell… who is…?" Josh figured it out as the words left his mouth.

"The beautiful White House assistant who rushes to the bedside of her critically wounded boss and mentor," C.J. answered. "They're pitching it at the Hallmark crowd."

"I don't understand," Donna said quietly. "Can they, can they do that? Make up some woman who's supposed to be me and put her on TV like that?"

"Basically, yes."

Josh smirked, but there wasn't any joy in it. "Pesky 1st Amendment. So, who's in this thing?"

"Diane Mitchell is Janette Malone. I think she's Canadian. The unnamed senior staffer is played by Bradford Whitley."

"I know him," Donna said with a little bit more emotion in her voice. "He was in that Meg Ryan movie. He's cute."

"Of course he's cute, he's supposed to be me," Josh said. Donna and C.J. both looked at him sharply. "What? Anyway, what kind of name is that? Sounds like a pretentious wannabe to me."

"I have no response to that," said C.J. with an absolutely straight face.

"But, why are they making a movie about me? What's the point?" Donna's mouth was a thin line, and she seemed embarrassed to have to talk about the TV project.

"They think it's romantic. Attractive, sassy assistant sets aside her bantering ways to rush to the side of the boss she idolizes, and by the second act he's back on his feet and sweeping her off of hers. In the third act, they sacrifice their forbidden love to keep their jobs and serve the country and the greater good. Heartbroken, they go on with nothing but resolve and the memory of forbidden love, etcetera, etcetera. I haven't seen a draft yet, but it will be a lot like that."

"That's not how it happened," Josh said. "We're coworkers. We just- "

" -Work well together," Josh and Donna said together, and then exchanged a sour look. Finishing each other's sentences and mirroring each other's body language would not help their cause.

"It's not how it happened?" C.J. shrugged. "Okay. But I can tell you this: by the time Adam Solomon finishes that script, that's how everyone will remember it. He's good at what he does." C.J. checked her watch. "I have a briefing. Take some time to talk about this, and decide how you want me to play it because in the next few days we will be getting questions about this. I am your first call, Josh, got it?"

"Yeah," Josh muttered as C.J. left. He stood, and pushed a hand through the wreck of wild hair at the back of his head. "Like this is a conversation I want to be having."

Donna shook her head. "Everything's not about you, Josh."

"No, I mean…" He considered, but wasn't sure where to take his response. "I'm sorry. I thought rumors about you and me had been pretty much run into the ground over the last few years. And I can't say I'm wild about seeing some guy who's supposed to be me getting, you know…"

"Shot." Her voice was softer, but he was still afraid to look at her.

"I was going to say 'heartbroken.' But yeah, shot, too."

"It didn't happen like that." She sounded like she was trying hard to argue.

"Who are you trying to convince? Me, or yourself? Come on, show some resolve. Plus, you know, the memory of forbidden love, etcetera…" He turned to flash a dimpled grin and saw the look on her face. For a moment, her guard was down, and she spoke from her heart.

"I didn't care. About serving the country, about how it might look. I just wanted you to get well. I knew if anything happened to you I'd be lost. I gave up on a lot of daydreams in exchange for you getting better. It was a fair trade. I'd do it again."

She was talking quickly, trying to get it all out. He couldn't help but remember the Illinois primary, when she'd told him his father had died. She spoke fast, more worried about not saying what needed to be said than about what happened after.

"This thing," she said, staring at her shoes, "this TV movie, it's going to be stupid and embarrassing and I don't care about that. Just promise me: no jokes from you. I've gotten them from everywhere else for years but I need to know you aren't going to be joking to me about this."

"Donna." She wasn't looking at him. She was waiting for him to say something stupid so she could go back to being mad at him, and feeling good about herself when she forgave him later.

"Donnatella Moss." She finally looked up.

"I've never been embarrassed about Rosslyn. I've had trouble with it, and you know that better than anyone, but I finally learned to remember it without reliving it. As for you and me, that's something that I'm never going to talk about here. Here is where we joke, and I get to tease you. Here is we work together and I have to pretend not to care about the gomer parade, or at least pretend to pretend, so everyone says I'm so obvious there can't possibly be anything going on in here." He tapped his chest, right over his heart.

"You told me once if I was in an accident you wouldn't stop for red lights. Do you honestly think I could have forgotten?" Embarrassed by his own honesty, Josh slowed down.

"Nothing changed." She sounded uncertain. "You got better, and we went back to work."

"Everything changed, Donna. The only thing in my life I care about as much as serving the President is having you with me. I figured if whatever we had before would keep you here when I was shot, I better not change it, any of it."

He stood up and realized what he'd said, that he'd just spelled out all the subtext of the last few years. It was liberating, but scary too. He shrugged and jammed his hands in his pockets.

"The one thing that never changes in my life is the way I treat you," he concluded, "because I can't stand the thought of you not being here any more."

"Joshua Lyman that might be the sweetest thing you've ever said to me. Get out."

"What?" He was confused, scared, and more than a little hurt. "Donna, I'm not a man generally known for my robust emotional honesty, and I pour my, my heart out to you here…"

"Get out. Please Josh, if you care for me at all, get out. I need to write a letter and I can't do it with you standing here."

"Well, okay." He opened the door, and looked back. "No, not okay. What letter? What the hell are we doing?"

"Well," she said, grabbing a pen and pad from C.J.'s desk, "I figure I better ask to be reassigned from your department if you're going to be asking me out at some point. There are rules."

"So, I'm asking you out some day? Just decide that, did you?" He was grinning, palms sweaty and mind racing but oddly at ease as he adjusted to the idea. "You can hold off on the letter. You don't actually work for me."

"I what?" She looked back up at him, puzzled. "I've been running your life for almost seven years, Josh, and I most certainly know where I work."

"In February, on the campaign, you worked for me," he said, referring to the day she thought of herself as joining Bartlet for America. "But as I recall, you had to barnstorm through Wisconsin for one more stab at working things out with Doctor Freeride."

"For which you plan on making me pay for how long, Josh?"

"For the rest of my life, if there's any justice. Anyway, in February you worked for me. In April you came back, and I put you on the payroll under Toby. Didn't you ever wonder why your badge says 'Communications' on the back?" He grinned. "You work WITH me. Every time I've told you that you work FOR me, I've been waiting for you to correct me."

"Huh."

"Guess I've been too subtle for my own good. I don't know the limit of my superhero-like powers. Fortunately I am bound to use them only for good."

"Get out."

"Jeez, Donna!" He whined to a crescendo, very impressive actually. He was the Yo-Yo Ma of whining. "What now? I was just teasing! It's what we do!"

"If I work for Toby, I've researched all the wrong HR policies on office relationships, not mention lobbying the wrong man for a raise for seven years. I have catching up to do."

"You aren't technically sane. You know that, right? Catch up to me in my office before you go home?" he asked her, backing away as she waved him out.

"Count on it."

"Excellent!" he said as he passed Margaret in the hall. To her bemused look, he raised an eyebrow. "It's a new positive thinking thing I'm doing now."

She wasn't convinced.

W.W.

"Charlie!"

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Tell Leo I need to speak with him for a minute, then we're going to need Ms. Fiderer for a few minutes after the budget meeting."

"Yes, sir. I'll have Debbie add it to the schedule."

"No, Charlie, we're going to do this over in the Residence. After the budget meeting I'm done till after lunch. Ask Debbie to slip over for a moment before we eat. We'll do calls over there this afternoon."

"Yes, sir."

W.W.

Josh was walking full speed down the corridor, his sleeves rolled up and a briefing binder in his hand. His posture, his expression, everything said, "Stand back! Josh Lyman, DCOS, has a full head of steam going!"

A hand reached out as he passed the mural room and stopped him cold. As he skidded to a halt he spun around to face Leo McGarry.

"Josh. Inside." Leo jerked his chin, indicating that Josh should come in.

"Hey Leo, I was just…" Josh trailed off as he saw Toby and C.J. waiting with Leo inside.

"You were just walking the halls looking busy so you could have time to think without brooding at your desk." Leo closed the door. "This is your third orbit past this doorway in the last five minutes, Josh."

"Oh. So, what's up?" Josh looked back and forth from one senior staffer to another.

"We need to get clear on our position on this NBC thing, Josh," C.J. told him.

"No what, this? It's not a thing." Josh waved it off.

"I've been talking to the President. He has some ideas." Leo looked tired. He looked tired a lot lately. "He wants you to take a few days away from the White House."

"What?" Josh was sputtering. "So, so, they run some fluff piece on Donna and suddenly I'm sent home from school? What's going on?"

"What's going ON, Josh," said Toby suddenly, with the way he had of accenting the last word in each phrase when he got worked up, "is that we are trying to wrap up the transportation bill, and all everyone in the West Wing will be talking about is you and DONNA." He rubbed his fingertips across his scalp. "You're distracted, Donna's work is suffering, and frankly, I think the mood in the bullpen could best be described as giddy. Word is out among the assistants, and they are taking their eyes off the ball."

Josh looked at Toby, eyebrows raised. "Our work is suffering? Come on, the transportation bill is a home run, Toby."

"Can I just say that I love hearing Toby say 'giddy'?" asked C.J.

Leo jumped in. "Focus, people. Josh, we lost Lieber and Clay on transportation. They want another 140 million for Amtrak in central Florida."

"Amtrak? Are you kidding me?" Josh rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Without Lieber and Clay the Southeast contingent falls apart… This is not happening."

"It is happening, Josh." Toby was slouching now against the credenza. "They want to extend the Autotrain service past Orlando, and they want Federal matching funds in this bill to do it."

"So here's what we're going to do. We're sending you down to Florida to meet with them. You'll take a few days, and you'll be conveniently out of the building when the NBC story first breaks. C.J. takes the question, and everyone's bored with the story by the time you get back."

"A few days? No, Leo." Josh wash shaking his head emphatically. "No, I'll fly down, knock some heads and redeye back."

"Not this time. Ritchie's not running for governor again, and it'd be nice to show some love in central Florida after the way we got hammered in the panhandle. The President told Lieber he wanted to give every consideration to his position, and of course to Florida's 27 electoral votes…" Leo started to grin. "You're taking the Autotrain, nothing like a few days riding the rails to give you perspective, and I quote the President, 'on the awesome majesty and splendor that is this great nation.' It'll show we have an open mind. So get your car and pack your bag, you need to be at the station in Lorton, 4PM."

"The President?" Josh hung his head. "The President wants me to take a train ride?"

"He more or less insisted, and we like to indulge him in these little things." Leo put a commiserating arm around Josh's shoulder. "It makes it easier when we need him to run the country. Go. Take the meeting. Say yes. Say no. We don't have skin in this game one way or the other, so we just need you to be there for Lieber, be nice to Clay, and come home after the weekend, preferably with their support or at least their tolerance."

"The weekend? It's Tuesday!"

"Why come back Friday and sit at home?" Toby was grinning a tight and evil grin. "I'm lining up some people in the state committee for you to see, show the flag. No heavy lifting, just some cocktail mixers, maybe a few meetings with the entertainment industry."

"Entertainment?" Josh's spider sense was tingling. Toby shouldn't ever grin. "Where am I staying?"

"Your meetings and the reservations are at the Floridian. I hear it's very nice, and it's on the DNC budget, not White House travel." C.J. was poker faced. Great, she was having way too much fun.

"Floridian. The Grand Floridian. Disney, Leo?" Josh whined, but he saw the warning look on the Chief of Staff's face. "Fine." He hung his head. "I serve at the pleasure of the President."

C.J. was looking at him with utter innocence. "If you can, bring back one of those hats with the little ears. Bet you'd look great in one of those." She lost it and started laughing.

Leo opened the door. "Margaret's getting Donna all the details. We'll soldier on here alone till you make it back."

"This isn't happening to me. The President is sending me to Disneyworld. If this was ever in an episode of Schoolhouse Rock I think I missed that day." Josh slumped off towards his office.

W.W.

"Donna!" He shouted from his office as he looked around for something, anything in the piles of work that might reasonably keep him chained to his desk for a few days.

"Donna!" he bellowed, frustrated more with himself than with her.

"Yes?" She had glided up behind him and her voice sounded just over his right shoulder.

"Gah!" he shrieked, sliding sideways, arms akimbo. "That's it. You're getting a bell for Christmas you can wear around your neck."

"And every time it rings an angel will get her wings. Was there a point to the shouting, or are you just keeping in practice?"

"I need something urgent, something that only I can fix, and that doesn't involve any actual work. I'm not having the best day."

"Sorry. Can't help you there. Here," she said, handing over a folder of travel documents. "You need to get going. You've got about two hours to pack and meet me at my apartment."

"I still can't believe they're doing this to me." Josh was muttering, savagely stuffing his papers into the backpack as he headed out of the office. "I'll see you… at your apartment?"

"Apparently, there is some concern that without careful oversight you might cast Florida into the sea. Toby is sending me to keep an eye on you, and to run meeting prep Thursday morning for Senator Clay."

"But I was counting on you to keep an eye on everything here. You're my lifeline to the office, and you can't be the lifeline if you come with me." Josh titled his head. "This trip is getting crazier and crazier."

"We've got our phones, and the laptop, and I'm sure the hotel has all the meeting facilities you'll need." Donna had her own bag under one arm and a stack of folders under the other.

Josh stopped, nearly at the lobby. "Okay, you don't seem to have grasped the lifeline concept. What's all that?" he gestured to the files under her arm.

"You're not the only one who has work to do on this trip you know. You're just the one bitching about it." She blew at a strand of hair that had escaped down over her face. "Toby mentioned that since I actually work for him, maybe I could _do_ some work for him. He's asking me to put something together for the President."

Without thinking, Josh reached out and tucked the stray strand of hair back behind her ear. Her hair was soft and sleek as anything he had ever touched. Pulling his hand back suddenly, he stammered, "I, uh, I'll be by in about two hours. We, we need to check in at Lorton so they can load the car."

"See you soon." She was a little distracted, and walked the wrong way to her car and had to turn around, feeling foolish under the eyes of the park police and secret service that watched the building.

W.W.

"Leo, what's the status of the project we discussed earlier?" The President was in his eager mode, rubbing his hands together and hunching his shoulders a lot. Leo was worried that any minute he'd find a way to start talking about National Parks and the afternoon would be a complete write-off.

"Charlie was able to round up just about everything we needed, Mr. President." Despite himself, Leo was starting to enjoy this too. "Debbie, we're taking the call here?"

"Yes, sir. Mr. President, I've faxed everything you outlined to Dr. Christensen. Her office promised she'd have a response and would be calling within the hour." Debbie Fiderer was wearing one of the flowing gowns she wore so often, a deceptively casual looking arrangement until you looked at the precise and measured way it was draped and tied. She had great attention to detail and a gift for imposing order, which served her well in her position as the chief administrative assistant to the President.

"Charlie," said the President, turning to his young aide, "if you can get this organized and ready so quickly, how come you haven't finished your requirements at GW yet? Dragging your feet, I wager."

The phone rang, the switchboard sending through the call they had been waiting for.

Charlie leapt forward to take the call, muttering, "I guess we'll never know, sir."

"Yes? Yes, ma'am. Please hold for the President." He handed the phone to President Bartlet.

"Hello Doctor Christensen. This is President Josiah Bartlet. Very good, thank you. I take it you received the information my aide sent to you? Very good. So, the residency issue is not an obstacle? She did? Wonderful. And the examination we proposed is acceptable? Yes. We'll send you the documents and supporting materials no later than next week. Oh, that's very kind of you. Yes, and thank you, Doctor. Good evening."

"So?" Leo was pacing. He could tell it was good news from his friend's body language, but he wanted to hear it.

"Miss Moss' academic credits, along with credit for her experiences here, combined with Toby's evaluation, are accepted by the regents of the University of Wisconsin at Madison."

"Nicely done, sir," Debbie was grinning, and she allowed herself to show some approval despite her normally acerbic tone.

"It wasn't me, Debbie," Jed Bartlet turned to his young aide. "Charlie's case was described by Dr. Christensen as compelling in every detail. Once Donna completes the assignment we sent off with her, and assuming it shows original research and not a rephrase of existing staff views, they will accept it as her final paper to complete her Bachelors of Science in Political Science."

"I'm sure she'll be very happy, sir." Charlie thought of his own college work and knew that there really was something special about pursuing knowledge beyond the compulsion of high school.

"There is one catch," the President added. "Leo, she wants you to review the paper and include a brief note of your thoughts for the regents board. They apparently think very highly of you in Madison."

"In Madison?" Leo thought for a moment. "Well. Who knew?"


	2. Tuesday Afternoon and Night

W.W. –Tuesday afternoon.

"And your call button is here if you need anything."

"Thank you, William." Donna tipped the porter, or conductor, or whatever you call the nice guy who carries your laptop and shows you how the bed folds down. She made a mental note to expense that tip later.

"You get settled in and have a lovely trip, Missus Lyman." He headed back down the corridor.

"It's Moss. Actually. William." She grimaced, and turned to where Josh was sitting, legs stretched across the aisle in the small compartment and feet up on her seat, looking idly out the window. He had the same sour look he'd had for the last hour and half as they'd driven to the station and had the car loaded on the Autotrain.

"Oh for god's sake, Josh. Lighten up." She shoved his feet off the seat, perhaps a little more abruptly than she'd actually intended. "We have all night in this compartment, please be the slightest bit decent."

He watched her sit with a huff and start digging through her satchel for papers and notes.

"What are you working on, anyway?" he asked her as she unpacked her laptop and plugged it in to an outlet next to her seat. "You have half the office in those two bags."

"I told you. I'm writing a position paper on the role of Non-Governmental Agencies in implementing foreign aid programs. Toby asked me to do it."

"We have papers like that. We have a lot of papers like that. Maybe he's mad at you, because, you know, of the thing." He gestured vaguely.

She shot him a grumpy look. "Ok, not even I, with all my years of deciphering Josh-speak, know exactly which thing you mean. The TV-movie press issue thing? Or maybe the asking for a raise thing. I'm sure you didn't mean the 'make even Donna's first trip to Disney World a miserable exercise in mindless research without any point or merit' thing? And no, he's not mad. He said the President wanted us to come up with a fresh view starting from a clean page, and Toby volunteered me to do it."

"I don't see the problem, Donna. I tease you about your grasp of trivia and pointless minutiae, I think with some justification, but you do stuff like this all the time. You rock on pointless trivia. Just bang that bad boy out."

She considered this as the train whistle sounded and the locomotives started idling louder somewhere up ahead of them.

"This is different. This is the first thing I've ever written, even on the campaign, which is specifically for the President. I know things I've written have wound up in front of him, things I've helped on, but Josh, this is Donna Moss writing something to be put in front of the President of the United States."

He grinned and nodded. "Yeah, and how cool is that?" He winked and she blushed. He remembered the first time he'd had that feeling.

The train shuddered and heaved and rumbled for a moment, and soon it started pulling smoothly out of the station. They had about three hours till they were going to the dining car for dinner. Donna lowered her head into a briefing book, and started typing on her laptop.

"Hey, before you get lost in there, are we going to, you know?" He tried to sound casual.

"Are we going to what?" she asked, eyes wide and cheeks blushing crimson. She had already been a million miles away when he snapped her back with his question.

"Sorry, I just meant, you know, in C.J.'s office. We said some things, I did mostly, that, never mind."

"Oh. You mean talk. Josh, we can't do this." She sounded sad but resigned.

"Well, if that's how you feel, I mean, it wasn't anything, and I didn't even mean whatever you thought I meant." He looked out the window, embarrassed, and thought about going to get a drink, maybe hiding in the bar car for a while.

"No, Josh." He turned back to her and she was smiling, and blushing so much it tinged the roots of her hair pink on her scalp. "C.J.'s right- you _are_ stupid. I mean, we can't talk right now, till I do this thing for the President. Of course we're going to talk, but I want us both to be able to really pay attention for a change. It's a long trip, maybe that's on purpose so we can talk. Depends on if C.J. was in on it. She's been waiting for us to talk for about five years I think."

"And we don't do that, do we? Talk?" He got up. "I'm going to get something to drink, and let you work for a while. Let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks honey, that's sweet," she said without looking up, typing full speed while chewing on a pencil stub.

He looked at her hard, but decided she wasn't teasing, she had just stopped paying attention. She might not have even realized she'd called him anything other than "Josh." Remembering something she had said earlier, he made a note to check into a few things before they got to Florida.

As he left the compartment into the narrow hallway, the train passed over a bridge, and the sun shown through the window. It caught her hair and spun it into gold. He squinted at her, and closed the door with a smile. First ever trip to Disney World, she'd said. That encouraged some definite plans to start forming in his wily brain. Smirking like a coyote, he stalked down the corridor to the bar.

W.W.

"Hello, mom? Yeah, hi. You'll never guess where I am." Josh looked around at the other passengers enjoying the cocktail lounge in the bar car. "Would you believe I'm on a train heading to Florida?"

Her laughter was audible to the man across the aisle from Josh.

"No really, I have this thing in Orlando, they're sending me down for a few days. No, that's okay Mom. They have a place for me to stay. No, I know. Yeah. Mom… Mom? Trust me, they're going to put us up in a nice place."

Oops. Now he'd done it. He winced and closed his eyes.

"It's me and an aide. Yes. No, just us, but we're meeting with Tom Lieber and… Yes, Donna. Of course she is. No, you really don't have to…" He stopped trying to cut her off, and let her talk.

"I'll let you know the numbers when I get back to the compartment. Donna has all the travel documents. Actually Mom I really _could_ find my own head without her help. No, I don't know 'Shuffle Off to Buffalo.' You don't have… okay…" She sang to him, and he sipped a vodka and coke and hung his head.

When she reached the line about the stork paying a visit, he finally cut her off. "Mom- Mom! I have to go, we're coming to a tunnel." He shook off the dirty look from the older man across the aisle, shrugging his shoulders and hurrying on. "I'll call you in the morning. No, no. Okay, love you too. Bye mom!"

"A tunnel?" the man said to him, shaking his head.

"Well, it could happen." Josh said weakly. He was interrupted by a moment of darkness, cut by the running lights and a few overhead dome lights coming on. There was a sudden shift in the sound of the train on the tracks as they flitted through a tunnel and then a shock of sunlight as they just as quickly emerged.

Josh and the stranger across the way shared a look, then began to smile. Josh started laughing, and the other man soon followed despite himself.

"Okay, son. Next one's on me," said the man, gesturing towards the bar.

W.W. –Tuesday evening.

Donna took a moment to review what she had written. She normally processed information very quickly, with the ability to absorb data and compose a response at the same time. It had saved her on more than one assignment since moving to the West Wing, but it seemed to be failing her tonight.

"One overlooked consequence of relying upon NGOs to implement foreign aid programs is the increased exposure of the administration and its agencies to pressure from elements in friendly governments outside the mainstream of those governments' political constituency. For example, last year… no, in 2003… the Green Party of Germany was able to effectively lobby the EU to restrict the Red Cross from distributing food aid that might contain genetically modified grains. This had a chilling effect on the US government's ability to provide agricultural incentives in future foreign aid legislation."

It wasn't too obscure, and the logic was clear. Donna hung her head. She could not for the life of her remember where she had heard about the Green Party action, so she could not cite it in her brief. She resolved to delete the section unless she could place a source in the next five minutes.

"Donna!" Josh's call rang down the corridor. She hoped no one had sleeping children in these compartments. She ignored him and stared at her paragraph again, trying to will the information from her memory.

The door open and Josh peered in. He looked insufferably tousled and relaxed. She had circles forming under her eyes and had broken a nail changing batteries on her laptop when the power outlet went flaky on her some time earlier.

"What do you want?" she snapped at him, a little more sharply than she had meant to do.

"I was just going to say, you know, dinner. Aren't you coming?" He was a little concerned at how tired she looked.

"I told you I'd go at 7:00, okay?" She looked back at her offending paragraph.

Josh sat down across from her. He lowered his voice a notch and said, trying not to sound too snarky, "Um, Donna…"

She did not look up and made a vague gesture with one hand. He saw she'd broken a nail off even shorter than she usually kept them.

"Donna?"

She looked up.

"Josh, what?"

"It's 8:15."

"Huh. So, are you going to believe your worthless watch or me, the person who always gets you where you need to be on time? It just so happens that it's…" She looked down at her computer. "It's almost 8:25."

"Yeah." He reached over and shut her laptop.

"Make sure that thing is sleeping." She rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand. "That outlet is flaky and I don't want to run out of battery again."

"Come on, I'll take you to dinner." Making sure it went to sleep, he lifted the laptop and slid in into the seat opposite her.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. "I'm sorry I was testy, Josh. It's really hard to concentrate on this stuff. I think they've got the wrong girl."

"Hey, none of that." He took her hands and helped her to her feet. He found that he was standing very close to her in the small compartment, but he didn't pull back as he usually did. "I've never had any doubts that you were the right girl."

There was a pause.

"I just said that out loud, didn't I?" His eyebrows rose in surprise.

"Yeah, but I won't tell anyone."

There was another pause, and she almost smiled. Then the moment passed, and they went off in search of dinner without speaking about it again.

W.W.

Josh looked at the compartment, which was laid out with two reclining seats across a small aisle. One of the beds folded down across them, and the other folded down from the wall above it. There was a small counter space, a smaller closet, and a tiny lavatory completing the family accommodation on the Autotrain. The compartment had a large window that could be covered with a screen or curtains for more privacy.

"Donna, how is this going to work?" He looked at the pile of materials still waiting her review.

"I know, I was thinking about this during dinner. It will only be good if you are on… okay, you very nearly made me make a 'who's on top' joke, Josh. That's not funny."

He grinned, flashing the dimples full force. "I'll take the top and you work down here, ok? I don't want you to have to try to work in the bar. It's too noisy in there."

"Thanks. And thanks for reminding me about the Green Party note from the WTO briefing. I still can't believe I forgot that." She was already mentally footnoting her paper.

"You should get a good assistant. I've been coasting on the skills of mine for years." He tried with a remarkable lack of success to look innocent.

"I refuse to comment on the grounds that my testimony may tend to incriminate me," she quoted.

"Okay, if you'd be so kind as to step out for a minute, I'll lower this thing and get changed, ok?" He hoped she didn't notice how nervous he sounded. Everything seemed different, more nuanced since they had admitted that there were feelings to be discussed, that they had thought about each other in a way other than strictly as friends or coworkers. It was getting harder to bring the banter without obsessing over subtext.

"Actually I was going to brush my teeth. I think that chicken salad had too much dill. I have pickle breath. You mind?"

"Nah, go ahead. Just gimme a minute." She slipped into the lavatory and he untucked his shirt. He called in to her as he began to lower the bunk, "You know, that chicken salad was mine by the way. So glad you enjoyed it!"

"Community food!" came the shout from inside as she started running water in the sink.

Josh had not really paid any attention when the porter had shown Donna how everything worked. He tended to go big picture and let Donna catch details, but that meant it took a lot longer than he expected to get the bed secured.

He had slipped out of his slacks and into a pair of sweat-shorts, and was just taking off his shirt when Donna called out, "You decent, Josh?"

He heard his name and asked, "Yes?" The shirt lifted up over his head as he shrugged out of it.

Donna heard, "Yes" and opened the door, only to see Josh just a foot away taking off his white oxford shirt. He had on a v-neck undershirt today and she could see the top of his pale scar through the wiry brown copper hair that dusted across his chest.

Josh got the shirt off to see her, staring at his chest. He self-consciously raised his shirt to cover the scar. "What are you doing, Donna? Give me half a minute please." He tried to turn away, but with the berth down there was not really room, and he wound up backed into a corner.

"It's okay," she told him. "I've seen it, remember?" She thought back to the time after he'd been shot. She had practically lived with him, and while he'd slept she'd allowed herself to touch his scar, to make sure it was real, and that he was getting better day-by-day. Despite the awful circumstances, she'd never felt more useful, or more needed, than during those days.

"Sorry," he said, lowering his shirt a little. "I was just going, um, I'm just going to lay down and read, ok?"

"Sure," she squeezed past him and ducked under the lowered bunk to slip back into her seat. As she passed, she raised her hand and briefly laid it over his scar, just a few inches from his heart, and let her fingertips rest a split second there before she sat down. He wasn't sure he hadn't imagined it, and she didn't say anything.

He went to the lavatory, and paid special attention to his breath and trying to tame his hair somewhat, then gave his reflection a wry smile at his efforts and went back into the compartment. He climbed the step up into the upper bunk and then realized he didn't have his book.

Instead of reading, he closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the train, the locomotives up ahead pulling the cars, the cars' wheels clacking over each new set of rails. With it all, there was the intermittent clicking of the keys on Donna's laptop and the occasional sigh or muttered notes to herself as she worked.

It was a very peaceful combination, and despite himself, Josh drifted quickly to sleep, the earliest he had been asleep in over a year.

W.W.

As she finished her work for the night, and nearly completed the paper itself, Donna listened to the soft breathing coming from above her. As quietly as she could, she gathered her materials up and let down the lower bunk, which was a good six inches wider than the top bunk.

She slipped into the lavatory and changed as best she could in the tight quarters. She dispensed with the robe and sweat pants she had brought, and instead opted for a wildly oversized Yale t-shirt she had received one year from Sam Seaborne as gift for some unspecified favor around Christmas time.

She turned out the light and slipped under the thin blue blanket that covered the lower bunk. For her, it was an early night, before 11 for certain, and she wondered if she'd be able to sleep. She decided to just lay her head down and rest for a few minutes.

W.W.

Josh awoke abruptly, unsure of his surroundings for a moment. He sat up quickly, fighting off a sudden feeling of dread, and smacked the top of his head against the top of the compartment with a good whack.

"Urrrrgh," he moaned, rubbing the crown of his head and trying to orient himself in the darkened compartment.

"Josh, are you okay?" Donna's voice was soft and clear and close, and the hairs on his arms all lifted and stood up at the sound.

"I think so. I had a dream, or maybe I heard something, anyway, I was just…" He didn't want to sound like a kid waking up and complaining about a bad dream. "Anyway, I'm okay."

"We crossed a bridge, I think. The last one woke me up, and when we crossed this one, there were some sharp sounds, about three or four sharp cracks as we crossed the far bank. I was worried it would wake you."

"Sorry," he told her, trying to relax, trying to let the calm of her voice wash over him and replace the sound of gunfire that was never too far from the back of his mind.

"You sleep so much better now, Josh. Just listening to you… Well, I used to worry. You really do sound better now compared to then." Her voice really was remarkable. He closed his eyes and drank in the soft voice coming up to him.

"I didn't know you paid that much attention, Donna," he told her. His own voice sounded harsh in is ears, and he lowered his voice somewhat. "But it's kind of nice."

"I've always paid attention to you Josh. The way you dress, the way you walk, and the way you strut in from a fight on the Hill. Even when I don't realize I'm doing it, I'll find myself replaying little bits and pieces hours or even days later. I can't help but notice you."

They continued, talking softly to each other in the darkness, for almost an hour and a half. They shared little observations from the years they'd spent together, and pondered thoughts they'd had during some harder times apart. They didn't declare their undying love and devotion, but they also didn't feel the need to retreat from every compliment with a joke, to offset every intimate moment with a bantering riposte.

Instead, they talked like very old friends, like young lovers, like two people who had gone years talking every day yet rarely said anything intimate. Finally, Josh had to get up to use the lavatory and take a pill for his back, which was bothering him just a bit as it always did while traveling. He hated to get up, to break the spell that had connected them for such a long time, but ultimately his one vodka and coke and the one beer he'd had with dinner caught up to what Donna referred to as his sensitive system and he climbed down to use the lavatory.

The light in the lavatory was bright and harsh, and it did a powerful job ruining the sweet and intimate atmosphere in which Josh and Donna had been wrapped. He washed up, and turned out the lights. He waited a few moments for his dazzled eyes to adjust, and then opened the door. He felt around for the step back up to his bunk. A soft voice called to him.

"Josh?" She was still there, still in that quiet and peaceful place, she'd somehow held on to it for him while he'd been shaken loose. He got a tingle at the nape of his neck briefly.

"Yes, Donnatella?" He tried to match her soft yet confident tone, but his voice cracked. He hated when it did that, but at least he wasn't being shrill.

"You know, I like it when you call me Donnatella. No one else really does that. Anyway, if I were to ask you something, can you promise to not get the wrong idea?"

He was having trouble paying attention to what she was saying. In the darkness, he saw only a pale glint of gold that must have been her hair on her pillow, and her voice was a velvet flame tickling right along the base of his brain.

"No, I don't think I can do that." He moved closer, to climb back up into his bunk. "I mean, I can't promise what I'll think till I think it, you know? But I can promise, I do promise that I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and give you a chance to explain why whatever thing I thought that's wrong is wrong. Did that make any sense?"

He felt her fingertips touch him on his thigh as he climbed the step to the top bunk. Her touch was warm and soft and stopped him in his tracks.

"Fair enough," she said. "What I wanted to say… Could you stay down here with me? I mean just to talk, for a while?"

He practically fell off the step. "And the wrong thing I'd be thinking here would be…?"

She chuckled, a throaty, joyful sound somewhere deep down in her chest. "Well, if you think this is about some quick train nookie, that would be the wrong thing."

"Of course not. Okay, well, obviously, I'm thinking about that _now_, thank you very much." He chuckled himself. "But yes, I'd love to keep talking, and stay down here with you, but there's not a lot of space." He was regretfully thinking they'd have to raise the bunks and sit in the chairs.

"There's room if we scoonch over. I don't mind. Do you?"

He paused, trying to clear train nookie images out of his head. "I'd like that."

He carefully ducked under the upper bunk and felt along the edge of her bed, and she helped guide him to the narrow empty strip and little bit of pillow that were his. As he slipped under the light blanket, he felt the tips of his toes sliding along Donna's legs and he thought he heard her make a very quiet, "Mmmm," sound when he did.

As he settled in, or tried to, their noses bumped together they were so close, and there didn't seem enough room for knees and elbows. It was suddenly very crowded and he was intensely aware of her smell, a sort of lavender and rose-petal smell that seemed to follow him wherever he moved.

"Donna," he said, with regret and tenderness, "maybe we should do this another time when we have more…" Her fingertips touching his lips interrupted him.

"Shush," she told him, then proceeded to wiggle and bump and turn around against him in a very distracting way. In a moment, she was rolled over, facing the wall, with his arm over her and wrapped in her arms, his hand clasped in hers under her chin, her body pressed back into his. He could feel the warmth of her skin where the backs of her thighs pressed against the fronts of his. Her hair was against his cheek and in his nose, and he was swimming in lavender and rose-petals.

"Is this ok? You can just stay like this for a while?" She sounded more nervous, more in need of reassurance than she had before.

"Donna," he said, moving his mouth close to her ear and breathing the words like a man nursing a spark into flame. "Donnatella, I could stay like this forever."

She pressed her body back into him, and sighed softly. "You know, Josh, C.J. was right about you."

"You mean," he asked with the same intimate voice they had been using before, "that I am abysmally ignorant of what goes on around me?"

She laughed and it made her press against him, and her breasts to rub along his arm.

"No, you nudnik! I meant she was right about you when she said you really are very sweet. I like that you can show me sweet, I think you spend too much time hiding it."

"I have to be… I have to be this person, to do what I do. A lot of it comes from who I am." He thought for a moment, and she just let him hold her. "I like who I am, mostly, but I don't like it that parts of me get turned off, get shut down and hidden away. Especially from… from the people I care about."

"You're a good man, Josh."

"I could be a better one."

They held each other for a time, and when they spoke again a long while later, they both pulled back from the very raw and intimate place they had been. They talked about her research, and about his first campaign, and what it had been like working for Hoynes.

She told him, not everything, but more than she had ever let herself before, about the relationship that had gone so wrong that it sent her away from home, all the way to Nashua. They both agreed that neither one of them could picture what their lives would have been like had she not come. They didn't seriously try.

When dawn came, the light of day found them still wrapped together, both softly snoring. Josh looked peaceful, the worry lines around his eyes smoothed away with a slightly surprised set to his features. Donna had a subtly smug grin playing at the corners of her full lips, a vision of loveliness somewhat marred by the way she was drooling on her pillow.


	3. Wednesday Morning

W.W. –Wednesday morning.

Donna woke gradually, almost indulgently. She was not awoken by her radio alarm, or the shrill alarm clock that was her backup alarm at home. She did not wake up to the ringing of a cell or the trilling of a pager. Instead, a sliver of sunlight, eluding the curtain over the train window, had crept across her pillow and warmed her face. She squinted against the sunshine and let the motion of the train rock her gently from sleep to waking.

She almost felt guilt for not feeling guilty. Anything after 6:00AM counted as sleeping in, and sleeping in was something that just didn't happen to her, not any more. It was glorious. She took a deep breath and yawned.

The breath caught in her throat. There was an arm around her, and a hand, a very masculine hand, clasped in hers against her breast. Well, that was unusual. She began to recall the events of the previous evening and slowly relaxed to the idea that she had slept with Josh Lyman.

Well, not slept with him, slept with him. They had slept together, slept in the same place. She gave up, there was no way she could phrase this even in her mind that it wouldn't sound naughty and wrong. Wrong, improper. Wrong, inappropriate. Wrong, indiscrete.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Still, it felt awfully good. The hand she held in hers was strong, with nice nails, clean but not too pretty. There were copper curls of short hair, thick but very soft, which glinted in the sliver of sunlight that was still stretching across her. Wrong. Mmm.

Still, there were certain problems to waking up in a narrow bed on a moving train wrapped in the arms of the White House Deputy Chief of Staff. For example, her mouth felt like the floor of a cab, and she was sure her eyes were watery and her skin blotchy from not having had a shower yet. Her hair was probably matted and tangled, and she had to pee, the last issue of which would only grow more urgent as the morning went on.

Thinking about that, and considering her situation, she realized two things more or less simultaneously. First, there was no way without employing levitation she was going to slip out of bed without waking Josh, which meant awkward conversation or at least embarrassedly catching him up when he awoke. Second, at some point in the night, her nightshirt had ridden dangerously far up in front, and scandalously so in the back.

"I wonder," she thought, "how I might possibly slip my shirt back down in between my bare bottom and my boss' groin before waking him."

She smiled, wondering if that last thought had ever been thought before in the history of the White House. Probably, but it was still funny.

Okay, first she had to work her shirt back down, then wake Josh just enough to get past him to the bathroom. After a few quick details were taken care of there, she'd face up to whatever fallout there was for their actions last night and her state of disarray this morning. She took a deep breath and tried to remain calm before moving to adjust her shirt.

"Good morning, Donna," came the smug rumble from just behind her right ear, scaring her almost out of the panties she really wished she was wearing right about then.

W.W.

Some time later, Josh lay on the lower bed, hands behind his head and legs crossed, casually regarding the bottom of the bunk above him. He was trying very hard to stop grinning.

When he first woke, Donna had been breathing quietly against him, their bodies as close as lovers' and the smell of her hair underlining every sensation with a soothing perfume. It wasn't like waking up together for the first time with a new lover, a feeling he had never spent much time analyzing. It wasn't _like_ anything else he knew, really. It was a unique experience, from the joy of watching her sleep, to the thrill of her skin against him.

He'd woken to find himself still spooned against her, a complimentary morning erection poking into her soft round bottom. As usual, when faced with an inappropriate gallant reflex of that kind, he'd started reciting the Bill of Rights under his breath trying to redirect the flow of blood farther north, not wanting her to awake to that, yet not willing to move before he was sure she was awake.

Normally he was back in control of his faculties somewhere around soldiers not being quartered in homes without the consent of the homeowner. Donna, well, she had been more of a challenge. Every time he'd finish an amendment, he'd take a breath and smell her hair. This tended to undue his efforts. He was enumerating the prohibitions against excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments when he finally felt himself subside.

A few minutes later, he'd become aware that Donna was awake. He'd held still until he was sure, then he'd told her good morning. Her reaction had been a shriek followed by a mad scramble over him, all arms and legs and hair as she dashed to the lavatory.

So now, he lay on her bed (their bed?) regarding the bunk above him and pondering the ways of women. He felt good. Not perfect, as he had no coffee and he was on a train for Florida and not in Washington doing his job. Still, the day had started well.

"Josh, what time is it?" came the call from the lavatory. She sounded irritated.

"It's almost 7:00," he told her. "What, this is like, an hour late to start our day?"

"I wanted to get breakfast before we got there is all," she told him, poking her head out. She didn't look him in the eye. "We get in to Sanford at 8:30, then drive to Orlando. It's about 30 miles or so."

"Hey, do I get a turn in there? You know, before we have to go?" He turned to sit up on the bed.

"Of course, I'm sorry." She stepped out and to the side, drying her face with a towel.

He stood, and they were very close together in the small compartment.

"I'll tell you what," he said impulsively, "why don't you get dressed and just try to score some juice and bagels or whatever. Once we get to Sanford, we'll stop somewhere and get a real breakfast, okay?"

"Whatever you'd like." She said it flatly, the way people at a wake say "Doesn't he look natural."

He frowned, and took her shoulders in his hands. "Donna, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing. Go brush your teeth." She was still avoiding looking at him.

"Okay, well, whatever you want. I'll be out in a few minutes." He let her go and they slipped past each other. He tackled his face and teeth, but there wasn't much to be salvaged with his hair. Fortunately, his hair was bushy enough that people tended to assume he'd meant to do with it whatever it wound up doing.

He wondered if things had gone too fast. It was only about twenty hours since he had first admitted to Donna in C.J.'s office that his feelings for her were not based solely in friendship.

He hung his head, and then looked himself in the eye.

"Scared her off. After six years, after everything. Excellent. Way to go, asshole."

Well, time for damage control. Maybe he could find some way to let her know that he was in no hurry, though he was. Some way to show her things didn't have to change between them, though they had. Some way to reassure her he wasn't in love with her, though he was.

He turned to the bathroom door and rapped it with his knuckles.

"Donna, you decent?"

He heard no reply and called louder, "Donna? Coming out!"

He stepped out, a cautious grin on his face, but she was gone. Her bag and laptop were gone too, and the beds were folded up. On his chair was an index card.

"Decided to work. See you at 8:30. Breakfast later is fine. –D"

He looked at it for a moment, and pursed his lips, blowing a tuneless whistle. He crumpled the card in his hand and arced it towards the trash.

"Excellent," he swore softly.

W.W.

By the time they reached the station, unloaded their car and got oriented, it was almost 10:00AM. Donna was in her own world, and Josh was trying to give her space. He eased his car out of town and onto 417-South. He watched signs for Denny's and IHOP and a dozen others flash by before they registered. He was supposed to be finding somewhere for breakfast.

Donna was looking out the window quietly, lost in her own world.

"Do you know what you want?" Josh asked her, indicating the signs for a half dozen eateries at the approaching exit.

"Good question," she said, still looking idly out the window. "I've been asking myself since Nashua, 'what do I want?' I've wondered what it would be like, actually trying to make some kind of relationship with you. What do I want? I want you to care about me, and take care of me, and respect me, and let me take care of you and support you in your work because what you do actually matters."

She turned and looked at him.

"What do I want? I want you to put me ahead of everything except the President. I want to not worry when they next Joey Lucas comes to town, the next cute liaison from the Hill or some woman from NASA with her own telescope stops by and suddenly gets your full attention. I want you to let me love you the way I want you to love me. That's what I want."

Exhausted, deflated without all that bottled up, she shrank back into her seat. Her head tipped slowly forward and her hair swept forward to hide her face.

He nodded once, and cut over to exit the freeway, cutting off an old man in a beat up Dodge who glared at him as they passed. He hit the exit still merging right and slipped into the traffic on the access road, eyes hunting back and forth like a predator's.

He saw a parking lot ahead for a liquor store, and began heading towards it. Then just past it he saw a side street lined with palms and some sort of flowering bushes, and he cut decisively towards that instead, running the car fast and hard into the turn.

"Josh!" Her hands were on the dashboard and she was looking at him in alarm. "What are you doing?"

"Finding a decent place to stop the car," he said, measuring the gap between two slow moving old junkers and flying between them. Just ahead, he saw a small square with a flag flying, maybe a post office or a school, something like that. He slowed and pulled with a jolt into the parking lot.

"Josh," she said, looking around in confusion, "Josh, I'm sorry. Really, I didn't mean it. Why are we stopping?"

"Hop out," he told her, unbuckling and opening his door.

"Josh, I don't understand," she called after him, but he was out and moving around to her side. She quickly fumbled her buckle off and stepped out as he opened her door.

"I'm sorry, Josh, I guess- I guess I kind of- I just kind of vented there," she told him, tripping over her words in a very un-Donna like way. "What are we stopped for?"

"Because," he told her, taking her hands in his, "I'm not about to have the first of what I plan on being many of kisses happen in traffic on some Florida freeway."

"Well, why didn't you mmmph!" Her words were cut off as he stepped in to her, slipping one hand to the small of her back and the other to the nape of her neck. His lips caught hers, and she was kissing him and he was kissing her. It started savage and fast and amazing. Then it became slower, more languorous and soft, and also amazing. She leaned in to him, and he stroked her back slowly as he eased the pressure of his lips on hers. Finally, after several breathless moments, he pulled back. She saw that his eyes were closed and his expression was reverent.

"Thank you." He pulled back and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes and looked back and forth from one of her eyes to the other, trying to look as deeply as he could into her soul. "Thank you very much."

"Any time," she said, dazed.

"Okay then," he said and kissed her again, warm and tender and joyful. She reached her hands into his hair and pulled his face to hers.

"Hey," came a voice from a few feet away, "you all can't do that here."

They stopped, and turned to see an old person (woman?) with a cane sitting on a bench. She was smiling from beneath a shag of ragged gray hair and enormous sunglasses.

"This is Federal property," she said, waving at the US Post Office signs at the entrance to the drive. "You can't go kissing a woman on Federal property mister."

"You should try telling my boss that," Josh said, making Donna giggle as she smoothed her blouse and tried to regain her composure. "But thank you, anyway. Come on, Donna, let's go get something to eat."

Grinning like fools, they got back into the car and wandered around till they found a restaurant. Neither one said anything, but once they got to the diner, they somehow wound up on the same side of the booth, holding hands till their food arrived.

The coffee was horrible, and the waffles were fabulous. Neither one made the slightest impression on Josh and Donna as they sat together. They paid the check, completely forgetting to get their receipts for expensing, and got back into the car for the drive to Orlando and the Grand Floridian.

As Josh pulled out of the parking lot, Donna ducked out of her belt and leaned across the car long enough to plant a quick peck on his cheek. When he turned, she was already slipping back under her belt.

"You sir, are welcome," she said without waiting for him to speak, and he grinned and started driving. The day was definitely looking up, he thought.


	4. Wednesday Afternoon

W.W. –Wednesday afternoon

At the hotel, something resembling a normal routine returned. Josh and Donna had a suite, a nice suite, with two bedrooms and a common room with a bar and a dining/conference table. There were faxes and conformations and some emails and phone messages waiting. Both Josh and Donna could do a full hotel deployment in their sleep, and often had over the years.

Donna particularly seemed to fall into the routine with some relief. Roles were defined and procedures were well understood. She could check them in and arrange the schedule without having to think about how things hand changed, about what it all meant. She needed that for just a little while, as it had been a really busy twenty-four hours, even by their standards. She had room service send up sandwiches and got them both fed before the first meeting of the afternoon was scheduled.

Josh was showered and changed and had checked in with Leo and C.J., and was ready for their meeting, a sit-down with Alan Parker, a former Congressman from Orlando who had retired and now served as an advisor to the state Democratic committee. As they waited for Parker and his assistant to arrive, Donna went to fix Josh's tie. She reached out to adjust it, and then she stopped, hands hanging in the air before him.

"Your tie is straight," she accused him.

"Well, yes." He looked slightly embarrassed.

"Your tie is never straight Josh. You are unable, famously unable, to make yourself presentable without my help. I am naturally suspicious of this sudden change."

He grinned and shot her a sheepish look. "I like you straightening my tie."

"Well, I don't mind doing it, but this is a tie is straight. If you can tie a decent knot, why have I wasted some part of almost every day in the last six years fixing your tie?"

"Well," he admitted, his face an interesting study in frank honesty, regret, and sly smiles all at war, "well, on the first campaign in Nashua, that first day, you grabbed my tie and straightened it before I left for the hall."

"And?" she asked, hands moving to her hips as she regarded him with increasing sternness.

"I liked you fixing my tie. I still do. Every day, you find something wrong with my tie, and you step close to me and start doing whatever you do to make me acceptable to you." He looked off into space, eyes crinkling and his grin spreading. "No matter how ticked off you are at me, no matter how stupid I've been or what gomer you've been seeing, for a few moments you're standing six inches from me, with your fingertips touching me. My day doesn't really start till you've done it. I've never thought of it as wasted time."

"But, but," she stammered, honestly flummoxed buy the combination of charm and manipulation and rampaging subtext. "But, if you can tie such a nice knot, how do you know I'll need to adjust it?"

He looked at her, smirking. "Because just before I walk in to the West Wing, or out of the hotel or whatever, I do this." And he grabbed the knot, jerked it down, then slid it roughly back into place. It was still a nicely tied tie, but no longer perfect.

She stared in shock.

"You are not technically sane, either," she accused. "I'm just pointing that out."

"True, but I blame you." There was a shadow of a dimple in his grin.

"Well, you can fix your own tie. I mean, honestly."

"Mmm, I think we both know that's not going to happen, don't we?" he asked her with an increasingly smug grin.

There was a knock at the door. It was time for him to meet with Parker. They stood for another moment, facing one another without speaking.

"Argh," she muttered explosively, reaching up to adjust his tie with the skill of long practice. "You're impossible, Josh Lyman."

"And yet you love me anyway," he breezed as he went by her to the table. "Show Mr. Parker in, Miss Moss."

W.W.

Still rattled, Donna got Parker and his assistant, a young woman named Valeria, introduced and organized at the table. As Josh settled down to discuss opportunities for improving voter mobilization for the next national election, Donna retreated to the other side of the suite.

She had her laptop and research materials set up, and was putting the polish her position paper. She had reached the point she had grown to fear in school, where the work was done but her fretting over the last comma and word choice was not. She began to remember that dropping out had not been entirely about supporting her boyfriend. Maybe she should start over, write a second paper, and then compare it to the first to see which was better?

W.W.

The phone rang and Donna answered, "Josh Lyman."

"Hey Donna, how was your trip?" It was Leo's assistant, Margaret.

"Very different. You know, with the train." Donna was speaking softly to avoid intruding on the conversation going on across the suite.

"Must be nice to get away from DC in January. I'm glad you had fun," Margaret said, and Donna was sure that her blush would be audible to Margaret through the phone line. "Listen, Leo asked me to see if you can send him your draft before the Domestic Policy workgroup meeting at 4:00. Is that a problem?"

"4:00 today?" Donna squeaked, a little louder than she meant to. She saw Josh look over briefly, eyebrow raised. Donna went on more calmly and quietly. "I have a draft but it's not polished. It still needs polishing."

"Well, whatever you have. I think the President asked him to look at it. Everything else is going good here. With this TV thing, you'll be the talk of the bullpen for a week. Are you two really going to hide out till the weekend?"

"We're not hiding out," Donna hissed, trying to stay quiet. "We are following instructions. I'm emailing this file, but make sure you explain to Leo about the polishing, okay? Promise me?"

"You got it, Sister. Now you guys have fun. I wish I got a train ride. I rode the Metroliner to New York a few times, but that was just like going on a plane but with more legroom. What was the sleeper like? Was it awfully romantic? Or was it spoiled by Josh?"

Margaret had a tendency to go off if you didn't keep her on the rails.

"Yes. I mean no. I mean, I was working." Donna sighed. "Will you get back to work? And don't forget to tell them about the polishing. You promised."

"Okay, talk to you later." Margaret sighed once more. "try to get some sun. Oh, and give Josh a kiss for us."

"What does that mean?" Donna was choking and wished she'd thought to get a glass of water.

"Nothing, Donna. I'm just teasing. Sensitive much? See you later."

"Bye." Donna hung her head for a moment and thought about her reactions to Margaret's teasing. It wasn't anything unusual, but it was hard for Donna to shrug it off. She needed a break. Instead of the promised polishing of her position paper, she surfed over to the Orlando visitors' bureau website and read up on the area. She's never been to central Florida before.

W.W.

"Okay, Alan, Valeria," Josh looked at his legal pad and made a quick assessment, " I think that about does it. Unless you had anything else?"

"No, sir, Mr. Lyman," said Valeria. She had given up trying to call him Josh. She was a little star struck, having mostly dealt with local contributors and the occasional national party flack. Having sat across the table from Josh Lyman for an hour, she understood the fan clubs and the web sites. When he turned his attention on you, Josh Lyman had the kind of indefinable charisma that turned beliefs into passions and passions into causes. "Thank you, sir." She glanced at her boss to make sure they were done.

"Valeria," drawled Parker with the Texas twang he had not lost in almost 45 years living in Florida, "be a good girl and let me and Josh have a quick word, will you? Maybe you could go arrange to have the car brought around?"

"Of course. Mr. Lyman," she nodded to Josh. "Just ring when you want the car, sir." She excused herself and headed downstairs.

"Nice kid," Josh observed casually. "Polite. So, what else can we do for you, Alan?"

"Actually, I just wanted to float something past you. I know you're doing good work for the President, Josh, and we all appreciate it."

"Thanks, but I'm sure you have something more on your mind?"

Alan leaned forward and regarded Josh over the wire rims of his glasses. "You know I'm on the governing board of UCF, don't you?"

"The Universoty? Sure," Josh thought for a moment. "You had that quarterback who went in the draft a while back, Culpeper, right? And some artist who was in DC at the National Gallery?"

"Right you are. Well, the school currently offers graduate poli-sci programs in Political Analysis and Policy, International studies and Environmental studies."

"I remember something about that. You sponsored a bipartisan board on wetlands conservation and business ethics, something like that?" Josh was recalling the 'back of the envelope' notes he'd made when prepping for his meeting with Parker.

Josh liked knowing everything, or appearing to, and Donna had found a nice summary of Parker's involvement with the wetlands board. It had caught her eye because Governor Ritchie had endorsed the board as a sign of bipartisan action, and then disregarded most of its recommendations.

"Yeah, that was ours. The thing is Josh, some of us, some of us in the alumni association and on the University board, are looking to raise the profile of the program."

"Do you want me to drop a word with the DNC? They might be able to shake loose a few internships for you."

"I had something different in mind." Alan leaned back in his chair and regarded Josh appraisingly. "What would you think about a position leading a new program, a school of government and leadership studies? Associate professor, full campus privileges, light class load, just enough to give the students your experience but enough free time to keep in touch with the national committee. Plus, regular office hours and home to your own bed most nights. Sound interesting?"

"Teaching- for me?" Josh blinked. "Well, yeah, I mean, no, I have a commitment to the President and to the DNC, Alan. No. No, we have a lot on our plate before the next guy comes, and we need to make sure the next guy is our guy. No. No."

"I know it's out of left field Josh, but I want you to take a few days and consider it, would you? We wouldn't need an answer till the end of January, and you would have plenty of time to arrange a transition in Washington."

"No, it's not that, it's…" Josh wished he could express clearly why his job wasn't voluntary, why it was what he needed to be doing. "Sure, I mean, I'll give it some thought, but I can tell you, the President needs me. Leo McGarry needs me."

"As I said, just give it a thought. We'd like to have a candidate named before we shape the curriculum and start recruiting, and I'd rather wait for the right guy then grab the best one left on the shelf." He stood, and shook hands with a warm smile and a firm handshake, still the political player even past his prime.

"Just remember one thing, Josh."

"What's that?"

"If the next guy, and the guy after that, are going to be _our_ guys, we need to make sure there is a renewable supply of our guys. A good school, with the right leaders, can do that. I think back to that policy review series at Yale. I recall a certain student who wrote to me for about six years after we met on campus, explaining in great detail why everything I said was wrong."

Josh grinned. "It's amazing how much smarter you got the older I got, Alan. I'm inclined to save your time and tell you 'no,' but I promise to think it over."

"That's all I ask. Maybe you'll find over time that I'm still getting smarter, eh? Give my regards to your mother. You seeing her while you're down?"

He noticed the way Josh glanced at his assistant before quietly answering. "She's down in West Palm. I imagine we'll be too busy to go down this trip."

They promised to keep in touch, and made a few more minutes of small talk before Parker excused himself and headed to his car. Josh stood for a few minutes looking at the closed door, lost in thought after Parker left.

"Donna!" His habitual call, in the comfortable suite, seemed loud even to Josh's ears.

"What? Again, with the shouting. Honestly, I'm right here." He turned, a little surprised. She had her legs pulled up under her at the desk, her hair in a loose knot at the nape of her neck, and a pencil behind one ear. She was stunning.

"What's next?" he asked, remembering even as he asked.

"I was hoping you'd tell me, actually. Your itinerary says Lake Buena Vista Development Company outreach, blocked out for over 5 hours, but there's no contact info and I never got a confirmation. Margaret said you requested it."

"Oh, yeah. Get changed. Comfortable shoes and that sweatshirt you stole from me." He walked over and handed her the envelope the concierge had slipped him when they checked in.

"What is-" She peeked in the envelope. Inside were two credit card-sized wafers of bar-coded plastic, one with Mickey Mouse and one with Minnie Mouse across the front.

"We need to be back here at 10:00 for the conference call. Until then, it's way past time someone showed you the house the mouse built."

She looked at him, at the tickets, at her schedules.

"Lake Buena Vista is the address of the Disney parks, isn't it? I read that. You moved a meeting and a briefing, so I could have five hours in Disney World." It wasn't a question.

"It'll be more like six hours if you'll move your cute little ass and go get some walking shoes." He grinned as she flew to her feet and went searching for her flats and her camera. She suddenly stopped when she reached the doorway and looked back.

"You really think it's cute?" she asked him, looking back over her shoulder at her derriere. She gave an experimental wiggle.

"Good God, woman, get your shoes!" he raged in mock anger and frustration, while trying not to dwell on the sight of her waggling bottom. He was struck by the thought that whether he stayed in Washington or took a job outside the Beltway, some day in the not too distant future, Donna Moss was not going to be his assistant any more.

Who would he muss his tie for then? He wondered if college professors got assistants, and what they did instead of putting in 18- to 20-hour days at the White House.

Donna reappeared, with his old Harvard sweatshirt wrapped around her waist and her camera in one hand and the tickets in the other. Her smile would stop traffic. Mmm. Wrong thoughts. He laughed. Very, very wrong. His smile spread till his dimple pinched his face on the right side and his eyelid started to flutter. It felt great. It was a good day.

W.W.

"Leo?" The President looked over his glasses at his Chief of Staff. "Do we have a response from Figueroa?"

"Ah, no sir. This is about the other thing. I can give you a minute…"

Jed Bartlet took his reading glasses off and stood up. An eager grin took about fifteen years off his face as he hopped out from behind his desk.

"The paper, already? I wasn't expecting anything till Monday or Tuesday!"

Leo grinned for a moment. More than one staffer referred to this particular expression as "The Grinch" because he looked just like the Grinch carving the roast beast. The grin faded a bit as he handed the document in question to the President.

"I asked Margaret to let me know if we'd have a draft this week, and being Margaret, and not knowing what it was for…" He shrugged. "When Donna heard Margaret wanted to show me a draft, she sent this."

The President was reading, his hand once again holding his reading glasses by the temple as he rapidly scanned the paper. A few times he grinned at a particular turn of phrase, then he frowned. The frown deepened as he jumped to the sources and supporting documents attached.

"This is all new, and supported?" He handed the paper back to Leo.

"Yeah. I ran it by Toby and had him look at the language. It doesn't really match anything we've done before. It's definitely hers. And the conclusions, especially that first part there, aren't so good."

"So what do we do about it now? I assume you have some ideas."

"Well, Mr. President, we obviously need to sit down with Donna when she gets back. I have a few ideas, but I want to tiger team things with some people, maybe tomorrow, before they come back."

"Keep me posted. Sure you aren't coming to the Kennedy tonight?"

"No sir, but you can fill me in at the Brazil briefing after." Leo hoped to wrap things early, since he worried the President was taking too many late nights. The strain was beginning to show on them all, but the President was not an entirely well man.

The President nodded. "Sounds like a plan. See you in a few hours."

As the President left the Oval Office, Leo went back to his office, shaking his head. Some days he wished he still drank. Okay, every day he wished he still drank. But when something like this happened, when everything good came with a complimentary shot in the gut, it made him remember why he had quit. It took emotional reserves to shake off bad news and keep working, and drinking took those reserves away. Donna had done some nice work, but she'd also put the spotlight on some looming problems that they would have to face sooner rather than later.


	5. Wednesday Night

W.W. –Wednesday night

Josh and Donna stood at the railing of the water taxi, watching the oasis of lights that was the Grand Floridian dock bob closer. They were both tired, as much from laughing and playing as from the walking they had done in the Magic Kingdom. Donna wore a pink Minnie Mouse hat, complete with ears, that had "Donnatella" embroidered on it. It clashed horribly with her outfit but she loved it beyond all reason, and it made Josh happy that she was happy.

Josh had a corresponding black Mickey Mouse hat tucked into his back pocket, with his full first name also stitched in. Donna could be very persuasive, especially when she was licking an ice cream and laughing like a schoolgirl. Josh closed his eyes for a moment and recalled the feeling of her lips, cold and touched with vanilla, running across his as she 'forced' him into buying the hats.

There had been other shopping, of course, for coworkers and family and friends. Josh thanked God that guests of the resort could have purchases delivered directly to their rooms, as he could not imagine carrying everything Donna had picked out. He had paid for it all, gladly, except for his hat. That was a gift from Donna. He opened his eyes again and looked at her.

She had her eyes half closed, probably burned out from trying to take in everything in a 5-hour trip. Her expression was one of rapt concentration but he could tell from the way the corners of her mouth had started to droop along with her eyelids, she was just about worn out. He leaned close to her and spoke softly to her.

"Hey. I had fun today."

She closed her eyes and leaned against him, with a total acceptance of comfort and closeness that would have shocked them both, just a day or two earlier.

"Me too. I never thought I'd say this to you, Josh, but you were really a fun date."

He grinned and put his arm around her. "Is that what this was? Our first date?"

She laid her head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm around him. "Is that so bad?"

"No, I'd say that was just right. Overdue, and inexcusably delayed and complicated, but otherwise just right."

He placed a brief kiss on the top of her head. The boat was almost to the dock, and they had a 10-o'clock call to prepare for once they got back.

"There are a couple things I want to tell you, Donna."

She looked at him. "That doesn't sound so good."

"No, nothing like that. You heard the offer Parker made me today, didn't you?"

She nodded, turning to face him and pulling back a little.

"Well," he continued, "I can't imagine leaving Washington, not any time soon anyway. But it did get me thinking. This job, DCOS, this is probably it for me. I don't have the foreign policy or military background for Chief of Staff, and I've been on the winning side of too many fights to ever run for national office myself. Oh, maybe if Sam had won the California 47th and moved up in the party, he might have made a place for me at the table…" He shrugged. "It's okay, I don't mind the consequences of being good at what I do."

"Very good at what you do, Josh. I know, the President, everyone knows that a lot has happened over the last six years because you helped make it happen."

"Thanks. It's nice to hear you think so. Still, that puts a deadline out there, some time, that I'm going to be looking for what to do next." His eyes scanned the shore, his face unreadable even to her.

"We have a lot of time, Josh. You'll figure out where we go from here."

He frowned, and they were pulling up to the dock. "Donna, that's just it. You could go a lot farther. You could be a career staffer, someone like Margaret, who works in the Wing for a very long time. You could be more: you could run an office, or a campaign. You could probably run for office yourself. I don't know the half of what you could do, I just know it's a lot more than you'll ever do following me."

She snorted and took his hand. "You're the smartest idiot I ever met. I'm not waiting for you because it's all I can do. I'm your partner. You lead and I follow, but you try going off without me, you see how far you get."

She thought for a moment and tried to express herself more fully. "No one ever wondered why Mrs. Landingham didn't do more with her career. She hitched herself to the very best and brightest and greatest man she could find, and then she made him work hard to be even better, every day for decades. There's something to be said for devotion to the right man, Josh."

They started walking towards the hotel.

"You can't let me hold you back, Donna. I'm just saying, you could be more than my assistant if it wasn't for how we feel about each other. You should get the chance."

She smacked him across the back of his head with her open hand.

"Ow!"

"Oh hush up. Let me set you straight. I've had offers. I could have left, and if it were just me, pining away for your love, I would have. I honestly never thought we'd ever have anything, you know, this way. I was used to the idea. But give up our professional partnership? Please." She snorted again.

They reached the hotel and collected some messages at the desk before heading upstairs.

Josh decided to try one more time.

"I just don't know what else I have to offer you, Donna."

The elevator doors closed.

"Kiss me." She closed her eyes and stood in front of him.

"Excuse me?" He looked at her in nervous disbelief.

"Come on, you idiot, kiss me," she said, eyes still closed, swaying slightly as the elevator started up.

"Here? Donna!"

"If you don't kiss her, you're the idiot she says you are," said the woman standing across the elevator from Josh and Donna. "Don't you think?" she asked her husband.

"Easily. For Christ's sake, man, kiss the girl." He was a little older, and his voice sounded just a bit like the actor, Wilford Brimley.

"Yes, sir," Josh said, confused. He leaned forward to kiss Donna on her cheek, but without bothering to open her eyes, she captured his face in her hands. She kissed him, firm and not at all tentatively. He soon forgot himself and was kissing back.

The elevator stopped, and the other couple sidled around them and left. The wife said, "That's a good boy," as she passed and patted Josh's shoulder on the way out.

The kiss continued, and broke only when the doors opened at the top floor and Donna regretfully pulled back. Her skin was flushed and her eyes were blinking rapidly.

"Wow," she cooed.

"Um, yeah." He was swaying like, well, like Josh Lyman with two drinks in him.

"Come on, Josh," she said, taking him by the hand and leading him to the room.

"Um, yeah." He followed, licking his lips and running a hand through his hair randomly.

"You said that," she told him as they went into the suite. There was a huge stack of gift boxes and bags across the table and one of the sofas.

"I guess I should get this put away before your 10 o'clock," she said, laying out his briefing binder and starting to move the packages to the bed in her room. "You're taking the call out here, right?"

Josh stood, knees locked, hair ruffled, watching her distractedly.

"Um, yeah."

She cocked her head at him. "760 verbal, you tell me. Hmmm." She took off with an armload into the back bedroom.

Josh sat at the cleared spot. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair.

"Um, yeah," he said one last time to himself, then grabbed his memo book and the phone, shaking himself and trying to focus.

As he talked to the junior senator from Florida, her aide, and the mayor of Tampa, he noticed Donna moving the small mountain of packages to the bed in the back bedroom. About twenty minutes later, he looked up and realized the door was closed and the light was off in the back.

Once the call wrapped up, he finished his notes and looked at the schedule. It was 11:30 and there was nothing tomorrow before 10:30 AM. This trip wasn't work: it was a vacation with the odd meeting or two to break up the day. Not that he was complaining, for a change.

He went to Donna's bedroom door, trying to decide if he should go in, or knock, or just go to bed.

"Donna," he called softly, "Are you still up?" He was afraid to wake her since he really didn't have anything to say, not anything that could be said briefly anyway. There was no response.

"Sweet dreams, Donnatella," he whispered. He pressed his lips to his fingers, and then pressed them gently to her door. He turned out the light and went to his own bedroom.

When he opened his door, he immediately noticed a few things. First, Donna's pink Minnie hat was on one nightstand next to the king sized bed. His Mickey hat, which he did not recall taking out of his pocket, was now on the other nightstand.

On the same side of his bed, over his covers, was laid out some of his sleepwear. It was his second oldest, second most broken in and comfortable Harvard t-shirt and a clean pair of Joe Boxer boxer-briefs. On them was laid an index card, with his assistant's notable scrawl: "You could offer me your love, you idiot. You already have mine. –D"

On the other side of his bed, under his covers, was laid out Donna Moss. She was already asleep, and was wearing his first oldest, first most broken in Harvard t-shirt. He wondered if she was wearing his boxers too, and laughed softly.

He managed to brush his teeth and take care of some other sundries without waking her, and slipped into bed beside her. He reached one hand out to let his fingertips touch her shoulder and rest there. He didn't want to wake her up, but he needed to be touching her at least a little. It wasn't as close as being on the bunk on the train, but over all, it was pretty damned good. He watched her sleep until his own eyes drifted closed and he slipped into dreams.


	6. Thursday Morning

W.W. –Thursday morning

Donna woke, briefly, to the feeling of Josh getting out of bed. It was morning, and she had slept soundly. She felt rested, and restless, and anxious to start the day. She waited for a few minutes for Josh to come back to bed. They had cuddled on and off through the night, but this was now two nights they'd slept together, without actually sleeping together. Before anything more happened, she knew they had a certain responsibility to talk some things over.

When he didn't immediately return, she frowned and rolled over. He'd taken his cell phone off the dresser, but all his clothes were still here except for the sweatpants she'd laid over his chair before going to bed. She guessed he was making some calls and was letting her sleep in. She debated whether to wait for him or to get up and go looking for him. While pondering her options she stretched and arched her back, and she had fallen back to sleep before she unwound from stretching.

W.W.

Josh sipped a cup of coffee and looked at the paper. They had sent up the Post and the local paper, and he was indulging himself by reading the sports pages first, something he usually only did at Christmas, Thanksgiving and on Mets' World Series days. There was a knock at the door, and he imagined it was a runner from the front desk with his requested New York Times.

Running a hand through his wild hair, mashing it more or less flat down the back, he opened the door, the local sports page still in his hand.

"Yes?" he said, opening the door. He stopped, looking at the woman standing in the doorway.

She looked him up and down, noting for future reference his scruffy socks and baggy sweatpants. Her eyes moved up to his stubbly chin, past his eyes, wide with shock, to his hair.

Without saying a word, she reached out, and ran her hand across the hair sticking up over his left ear. She leaned forward, and holding his head with her right hand, she reached up to plant a kiss on his cheek.

He stood aside, still speechless, as she came into the room. She looked with unconcealed interest at the lovely suite and the riot of newspaper and legal pads on the big table. She walked slowly into the room, and turned to look at him.

"Close your mouth, Josh. And the door, as well." Her voice assumed assent and she waited next to a chair, with one eyebrow raised.

He shook himself like a dog coming out of the water, and closed the door. He then hurried over and pulled out the chair for her. He made sure his mouth was closed and was trying to think of what he could possibly say to this woman. His mind flashed quickly to Donna, sleeping half naked about fifteen feet from where he was standing.

"So," the woman said, settling in to the chair and looking at him critically, "You have nothing to say to me?"

"Um, hi, Mom?"

W.W.

Donna stood, bent at the waist almost double, her hands palm down on the floor, her hair falling all around her. It was a yoga form, part of her morning stretching, and about the only thing she retained from one semester as a drama major at UW-Madison. She grinned, imagining what it would do to Josh if he came in right then. Maybe it was time to go looking for him.

W.W.

"So, you call, you tell me you are coming to Florida and will be here for days," Josh's mother complained, "but I shouldn't expect you to make it down to West Palm. Did you think my little boy would be this close and I would sit at home, looking at pictures from last year perhaps?"

"Mom, it's great to see you but-" Josh began, then sat across from her and looked at her in a mixture of confusion and concern, "but, how did you get here?"

"Mr. Maxwell, from across the alley, has a new Chrysler. Always up at the crack of dawn, putting on wax or whatever men do with cars. Every night, he puts on a cover after rubbing it with a cloth. 'Come for a ride with me, Ruth,' he always says. So this time, he tells me 'Come for a ride with me, Ruth.' And I went into the house."

She smiled. "I get my little green bag, the one your father used to carry when he went to Chicago. I get my little green bag and I come out to Mr. Maxwell. 'Avi,' I tell him, 'get your keys, we're going for a ride.' We drove up, and he brought me here."

Josh shook his head. "Mom, it's like, a three hour drive from West Palm Beach. What time did you leave?"

"We left yesterday afternoon. I don't like riding in cars at night, Josh. You know this."

"Yesterday? Where did you sleep?" His eyes narrowed. "Where's Mr. Maxwell now?"

"We stayed at the Hyatt. It's a perfectly nice hotel, not so fancy as this, but Avi is on a fixed income too. He's retired from a company, something with computers."

Josh was shaking his head, and slumped forward to put his head in his hands. "You drove up here with some snowbird gigolo and stayed at the Hyatt?"

She reached over and smacked the back of his hands with a section of the Post.

"You show some respect, Joshua. Avi Maxwell is a perfect gentleman, not that you would ever know. Do you call? Do you come see me? Who takes me to the Swan Court buffet for my birthday? Avi Maxwell, thank you. And to Temple on the bus, him with his Chrysler, but he rides the bus, because I like the bus."

She looked around. "Now, where is your Donna? I brought her a little something, down in the car. They have her staying in this place too? Or did you put her in some cheap hotel while you lie around here?" She was giving him a dangerous look.

"Yeah, Mom, they put her at the Hyatt," he told her with a grin, and they both started laughing.

Behind her, Josh saw the door to his bedroom open, and tried to keep his face calm as the door swung wide. He never did have a poker face. Ruth Lyman turned to see Donna Moss standing in the open door of her son's bedroom.

W.W.

Donna stood in the doorway, admiring the way Josh looked at her with a combination of fear, desire and worry. He really was a very sweet man.

"Donna," he said, his voice rising dangerously towards breaking, "you remember my…"

"Mrs. Lyman!" Donna enthused, gathering her robe about her and running across the suite to kneel by Josh's mother. She had heard voices and, improvising with what was at hand, had splashed some water on her face, put on a big terry robe and wrapped her hair turban-fashion in a big towel. She looked scrubbed and fresh, like she'd just stepped out of a spa.

"Donnatella," Ruth said, rising slowly and leaning a bit on the table. "I've told you dear, you really must call me Ruth." They embraced and did that air kissing thing women did.

"It's such a nice surprise to see you," Donna told her. "Josh didn't say anything about you being here this trip. Have you eaten? Can I get you anything?"

Josh, who had been closing the door to the bedroom that still contained his suitcase and nothing of Donna's but a Minnie Mouse hat, turned and called back to them.

"Ask her if her boyfriend wants anything too."

"Joshua!" said both Ruth and Donna together, in identical exasperated tones. They looked at each other, and Donna blushed while Ruth smiled.

"I have a gentleman friend making reservations for breakfast. Can you join us, dear, or does my son the slave driver have you chained to a computer this whole trip?"

"I'd love to join you, if it's not any trouble. You can tell me all the embarrassing stories we didn't cover when you were in Washington. Will you excuse me while I make myself fit for company?" Donna threw Josh a look filled with gleeful venom.

Donna excused herself and retreated into to Josh's bedroom, wondering how they were going to manage getting her and Josh both dressed without giving up the pretense of staying in separate rooms.

Josh managed to convince his mother to meet them down stairs, which was good since he couldn't exactly excuse himself to go in to 'Donna's' room for clothes. As he walked his mom to the door, she looked at the closed bedroom door and grabbed Josh by the ear, pulling his head down so his ear was at her mouth's level.

"Joshua Lyman, do you love this girl?" Her voice was strictly no nonsense, and she was ready, he knew, to pinch the hell out of him if she even suspected he was lying.

"Ow, err. Ah," he grumbled. "Yes. Yes!" She released him and he sprang back up, rubbing his ear. "How did you know?"

"Oh, my little Josh," she laughed softly, almost sadly. "A mother knows. Besides, since when does a woman come out of a shower with wet hair and dry feet? I'll tell Avi to pull around the Chrysler. You be nice to Mr. Maxwell, and don't give him the attitude."

"Yes, Mom," he said dutifully.

"Such a good boy," she said with a sudden grin. "See you downstairs."

The door closed behind her, and he slumped for a moment against it, letting the cool wood press against his forehead.

"Donna!"

W.W.

Margaret dialed the number with some regret, but she had her instructions. Donna's voice when she answered was so bubbly that Margaret wondered exactly how nice the Florida trip had been so far.

"Josh Lyman," Donna practically sang.

"Hey Donna, how's the trip?" It was worth a moment of small talk at the risk of making Leo impatient.

"Oh, the usual- a few meetings, a trip to Disney World with actual rides and shows, and not one emergency call. I'm just about to sit down to a late breakfast with Josh, his mother and her friend. How is life inside the Beltway?"

"Drizzly and gray. He introduced you to his mother?" Margaret sat down and leaned forward in full gossip mode. "I mean, without having been shot recently?"

"Margaret!" Leo's yell found her with the precision of a GPS-guided smart bomb. She went to her game face.

"Please hold for the Chief of Staff." She said formally and parked the call before Donna had even responded.

In Washington, Leo was glaring at the wall separating him from his assistant, just radiating his displeasure and knowing it would find her thorough the wall. He punched the button and picked up the phone.

In Orlando, Donna was handing the phone to Josh, figuring Leo was mad enough without being asked to hold for his Deputy Chief of Staff.

"It's Leo. This thing with the TV, it's gonna break tomorrow. We'd hoped to push it to the weekend but they want to run promos starting on tomorrow's morning shows. But there's another thing, a new thing. I hate to ask you to do this, but I need you to fly up this afternoon. You'll meet with the President and then get back down there late tonight so you're away when the stories break on the TV tomorrow. Got it?"

"No problem, Leo," Josh said, with a confident wink to his mother. 'Who's da man? I'm da man!' the wink said.

"Josh?" Leo looked at the phone, scowling.

"Leo?"

"Josh!" Leo looked in the direction of his assistant again with annoyance. Margaret was slinking lower and lower in her seat, fully aware from the tone of voice coming through Leo's door that something was awry. "What are you doing on this call?"

"You called me," Josh said in some confusion, looking at Donna and making frantic and vaguely threatening gestures. Something was indeed awry, and he hoped uncharitably that it was her fault.

"Josh, I need to talk to Donna," Leo said shortly.

"What would you want Donna for?" Josh said, and he could almost watch the words coming out of his mouth and hanging in the air, just being wrong. He winced preemptively.

His mom reached over and pinched his arm, hissing, "With her sitting right there, you _schlemiel_! This is how we raised you? To act this way to the girl you love? Where did you leave your manners?" Her fingers were pecking and pinching at him, punctuating every phrase.

"Mom, Ow, Mom!" Josh whined, rubbing his hand over the spots she'd pinched.

"Ruth?" Leo asked confused. "Josh, is that Ruth?"

"Yeah, Leo, we were just getting ready to have a bite to eat. So what's this thing that you need Donna for?" He eyed his mom carefully, and then mouthed 'sorry' to Donna, which shocked Donna more than the call from Leo had done.

"It's a thing, the President wants her here right away, and we need it done before NBC drops the biopic story. Tell her to call Margaret from the car, we're putting her on a plane."

"I'll reschedule Lieber and we'll be back this afternoon, sir."

"No, the President was pretty specific. I need you to stay out of DC till at least Sunday, and I need Donnatella Moss in the Oval Office in five hours. Now get her moving. Oh, and give my love to your mom." He hung up.

Josh looked at the phone, and slowly closed it. He handed it to Donna, and turned to Avi Maxwell.

"Mr. Maxwell, I hate to do this, but would you mind taking my mother back to the hotel after you eat? I need to put Donna on a plane."

"Is something wrong, Josh?" Donna asked, trying to communicate to him that she was dying to know what was going on without having to pry it out of him in front of his mother.

"The President wants to see you, and not me, in the Oval Office before dinner, and I am not to leave here till you come back." He was glowering. She could tell he was going to have a moody day till he had her back and had pumped her for every last detail of her meeting.

"Am I in trouble?" She looked at Ruth in what she hoped was a reassuring way. "I mean, not that I would be, or anything, or that there was anything to be worried about at all."

"No, everything's fine," Josh lied badly. "Oh, and Mom? Leo McGarry sends his love."

As Josh and Donna excused themselves for a quick dash back to the room to get her ready for her flight, they left Ruth to explain to a melancholy Avi Maxwell that Leo McGarry was an old friend of her late husband Noah. It certainly killed the mood of what had been a festive breakfast.

As they rode the elevator up to the room, Josh and Donna were both lost in thought.

"Did the President hear something somehow?" Josh finally wondered quietly. "If anything happens, blame me. It's all my fault, at least till I can get back and get things straightened out."

"My fallback position is always to blame you, Josh," she said with utter sincerity. "I just can't believe it, I can't get my mind around it."

"Don't worry," he told her, taking her hand. "There could be all sorts of things the President wants to talk about. Not that I can think of any, but hey, I'm sure they're out there, you know… out there. Somewhere." His face was bleak.

"Oh, not that. I haven't even started worrying about that yet," she dismissed a command appearance with her boss' boss' boss, the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, the Leader of the Free World, Nobel Laureate Josiah Bartlet, dismissed it with an impatient wave of her free hand.

"Then what are you talking about?" Josh said looking at her as she squeezed his hand hard in hers.

"You told your mom that you love me," she said in awe and wonder.


	7. Thursday Afternoon

W.W. –Thursday afternoon

"Toby, he's ready for you now." Charlie Young held open the door leading into the Oval Office.

"Thanks, Charlie. Good afternoon Mr. President."

The President didn't get up from his desk, but he waved Toby to a seat. "I take it you've seen this?" He held a thick briefing memo in his hand.

"Yes, Mr. President. Leo asked me to review the language, but I've also been looking into the paper itself."

"So you see the problem?"

"Yes, Mr. President. I take it you have a solution in mind?"

"I do. Or rather Leo does. He's working a few angles with Josh's staff now. Is she here yet?"

"Shortly, sir." Toby rubbed a thumb thoughtfully along his scalp over his right eye, regarding the President. "You know she doesn't actually work for Josh, sir."

"That had not escaped us, Toby." The President frowned at him. "Were you stashing this poor girl on your payroll all this time, just in case our dear friend Josh should ever pull his head out of his …"

The door opened. It was Charlie, and the President could see a very serious C.J. behind him, along with a representative from State and two other women.

"Are you ready for them now, Mr. President?" Charlie asked smoothly. At the President's quick nod, C.J. led the other three in.

"Good afternoon, Mr. President," C.J. said formally. Behind her was Ron Taliaferro from State, Donna Moss looking pale and rather tentative, and another woman who Toby had not met before.

"Take a seat everybody. This is going to take a few minutes." The President came out from behind his desk and shook Taliaferro's hand. "Nice to see you again, Ron. Leo McGarry's going to be here shortly, and will have some questions for you."

"Of course, Mr. President."

C.J. turned to indicate the other woman, a somewhat apple-cheeked and pleasantly smiling woman in her late fifties or early sixties, with a wind-burned nose that spoke of outdoor recreation and huge glasses that spoke just as loudly of too much time buried in books and in front of computer screens.

"Mr. President, Doctor Christensen, whom I'm told you spoke with previously?"

"Yes, excellent. Thanks for coming on such short notice, Doctor. Do sit down." The President turned and looked towards the door. "And you? Get over here, you."

Donna, who had hugged the wall and placed herself to make mental notes for Josh, wishing for a stack of index cards, looked at Charlie, then back at the President. "Me, sir?"

"Yes, we need to have a little talk, you and I, Miss Moss. But first, I would like you to answer a couple of questions for us about this." And with this, he held up a copy of the briefing memo she had written.

"Sir? I mean, I'm sorry, Mr. President, that was just a preliminary draft sir. I was planning on polishing it this weekend." She took a half step forward, but she wouldn't cross onto the area defined by the chairs and love seats where the President and his other guests were seated.

"First of all, you wrote this brief in response to the assignment Toby gave you this week?" The President was still looking directly at her. It was very disconcerting.

"Yes, Mr. President."

"You didn't have help from Josh or Toby's staff, or from Josh on your trip?"

"No, sir. If there are any mistakes, sir, it wasn't anyone's work but mine. I did have some of the other assistants pull research files for me, but I included an index and made sure they only gave me what I'd asked for." She looked at the others, briefly, and then looked back at the President, who was looking at her very seriously.

"Donna," Toby said, with his hangdog eyes regarding her from under his bushy eyebrows, "in the second section, you indicate the scope of your research, and then immediately follow with a summary that expands considerably on the research you quoted."

"Yes?"

"Speak up, Miss Moss," said the President.

"Yes, sir. Toby, I noted the sources, and I also included my summary of the whole issue from what I'd found. That's how Josh likes my research summaries. Or rather, that's how I like to prepare information for him. Is that a problem?"

C.J. sighed. "I imagine he does like summaries this way. It's a lot easier to do planning if research comes with this level of analysis."

"Miss Moss," said Ron Toliaferro, then he looked at the President, "If I may, sir?"

"Of course, Ron."

"Miss Moss," the young man began again, "you provided quite a bit of analysis of the interactions of NGOs and U.S. foreign relations policy. Is there a reason you did not look at the effects on domestic programs?"

"The conclusions for domestic policy were much less clear-cut than for foreign policy, Mr. Taliaferro. I suppose you could extend the idea but you'd have to take a lot more things into account, and I'm not sure how useful the conclusions would be then."

"You see that, Doctor?" The President grinned. "Specificity, definition of scope and applicability. What do you make of that?"

Doctor Christensen took her glasses off and absently wiped them on the hem of her jacket, with a lack of self-consciousness that said the gesture was a very familiar one.

"Exceptional. From her paper it's obvious she brings a great deal of perception to the work, and her bibliography shows several unconventional choices that all support her position clearly. Remarkable, considering her previous body of work."

"My previous…?" Donna was obviously confused but was also not about to let Josh or the President down.

"Okay, Charlie," the President gestured, and Charlie waved in the still photographer.

"Donna, will you step over here by me, please?" The President held out his hand, and Donna crossed to him.

W.W.

Donna wished she'd worn flats. With her heels on she was taller than the President. That was okay with Josh or Toby, but she felt like she should duck down a bit standing next to the President.

"Donna, let me introduce you to Doctor Chandra Christensen. She's the one for whom we asked you to put together that paper."

Donna reached out and shook her hand, and hoped she was saying something nice on autopilot. She had run out of nervous an hour ago on the plane and had moved on to scared. She worried the fright stink was rolling off her like bad cologne.

"Very impressive work, Miss Moss." Doctor Christensen held up the paper, and Donna could see her copy had notes it what might be Leo McGarry's spidery blue pen all along the margins. "Do you mind if I keep this copy?"

"Not at all, doctor, if it's allowed?" She looked at Toby and at C.J. who nodded firmly, grinning.

Toby was grinning too, which was really scary. "I'm keeping mine, Donna."

The President threw one arm around Donna and moved her to one side slightly, lining up for a photo. "I think the good doctor has something in trade for you, Donna." He smiled, his big campaign smile, his chili-cooking smile.

C.J. handed Doctor Christensen a folio, from which the doctor pulled a rolled up piece of paper, tied with a deep blue ribbon.

"Donnatella Moss, in consideration of your academic achievement, and credit for work with and for the current administration in your position of-" Christensen paused, and arched an eye at C.J. "Deputy, Deputy Chief of Staff?"

"That's right, Doctor Christensen," C.J. stated blandly.

"In my capacity as a representative of the executive board's undergraduate affairs committee, the University of Wisconsin at Madison is proud to award you this…"

She handed Donna the very stiff piece of paper, a tight tube of parchment that seemed oddly warm in Donna's hand.

"For satisfactorily completing your Bachelors of Science degree in Political Science. Congratulations."

There was a rush of voices, and a flash went off that blinded her, and just as well might have knocked her over if it wasn't for the President's arm around her.

After a round of pictures and another of explanations, Donna was finally convinced that she really had just become a college graduate. It nearly took an executive order for her to stop saying, "Really?" every few minutes, but she eventually reined it in.

After the last picture was taken, and Doctor Christensen had been led out, Leo McGarry stepped forward. He'd arrived during the previous hoopla and Donna just now realized he was speaking to her.

"Donna, we need to have a talk. Can you step into my office for a few minutes?"

"Of course." She looked to the President, who nodded solemnly. "Thank you again, Mr. President."

When they went in to Leo's office, he closed the door. He sat down, and he looked tired. Donna wondered if he was getting enough rest, and if not, where he might ever make up the difference. Impossible.

"Donna, I have to ask you a couple of questions, about you and your relationship Josh Lyman."

She had known for six years this conversation was coming, from the first day Josh had hung his campaign ID around her neck. It was still a shock.

"Yes, Mr. McGarry."

He frowned. "You've always managed to call me Leo before, Donna."

"Well, sir, you haven't wanted to ask me questions about my relationship with Josh Lyman, sir."

"I suppose not. Now, you don't have to answer anything, but I hope you'll trust me when I tell you that I have your interests in mind, as well as Josh's, and the administration's."

"If you say so, sir."

"I do say so, damn it, and so does the President." He grimaced. "I'm sorry. It's been a long day. You know that Josh has been offered a position outside the administration?"

"I really can't say, sir." She wondered how he'd heard so fast.

He grinned. "You're a good girl, Donna." It was a tired smile, but warm. "I'm not fishing, I know, because Alan Parker called me this morning to see if there was any way I could make Josh consider his offer."

"Yes, Leo. Josh was offered a teaching job, at the University of Central Florida. He pretty much turned it down on the spot. He doesn't want to leave the President."

Leo looked at her, and then rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.

"There isn't an easy way for me to ask you this, and it's technically none of my business, but I need some information to help the President and me make a decision. Are you romantically involved with Josh Lyman?"

W.W.

Josh left the conference room and headed back to his suite. The meeting with Senator Lieber had been easy, the kind of thing he could do in his sleep. He had agreed to recommend an increase in the Amtrak subsidy to cover a non-binding study of extending Autotrain, to be included in the next omnibus budget bill. Lieber had agreed to back the transportation bill without amendment through his committee.

Josh was glad the meeting had been so straightforward. His mind was focused ten per cent on the Lieber meeting and ninety per cent on Donna and what might be going on at the White House. He'd called Leo and gotten a brush off. C.J. was in the briefing room, and he was afraid to call Leo without a plausible reason.

He got back to the suite, and called room service for a burnt cheeseburger and a Heineken. He wrote up his memo from the Lieber meeting and set it aside for faxing when he went back by the desk.

Mostly, he nursed his Heineken for two hours and stared at his phone, waiting for it to ring. He would have liked to drink more, but he planned on taking his own car to the airport to pick up Donna when she got back. Sensitive system jokes aside, he wasn't prepared to put Donna in a car with him at the wheel with anything over one beer under his belt.

At almost 7:30, his phone rang.

"Josh Lyman." He saw her number on the caller ID, but he was never sure if she was on hands-free or not. After an embarrassing banter slip during the North Carolina primary years ago, he always waited till he could tell she was alone.

"Josh, it's me." Her voice was tired, dry. It was the voice you have after a draining day when there aren't any emotions left to put into your voice. It hurt him and scared him, and he felt the scar on his chest itch for a moment.

"Are you okay? Can you talk?" He hoped his voice was soothing, supportive. He didn't want to nag, but he needed to know she was all right. Donna being all right had become supremely important to him in the last few days. Well, six years plus the last few days.

"I'm at the gate, and my plane gets there at 12:55 tonight. I have to go through Atlanta." She knew how much he hated doing that, and was sure she would hate it too. "I can take a shuttle to the hotel."

"Don't worry, I'll come get you."

"It's not too much trouble? How did the thing with Lieber go?" There was finally a hint of 'Donna' in her voice. He could tell she was thinking about him, and about his day, and not thinking about her own.

"Everything's fine here, well, except the obvious."

"Obvious what, Josh?"

"I missed you today. I don't want to do this, us being apart all day." He shrugged, and then realized he was shrugging to a telephone. "I'll come get you, and you can tell me about your day then, okay?"

"Okay. That sounds really good. Oh, they're calling my flight."

"Okay, see you soon. And Donna… Donnatella? You still there?"

"Yes?"

"I love you." There was a long silence. He wondered if she'd heard him, if she was upset. He wondered what had happened at the White House.

"You decide to tell me this now." It wasn't a question. She did that a lot.

"I was going to wait for a time when everything was perfect, you know, but I thought you really should hear me say it now." He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb. "Sorry."

"No," she said and he thought she might be crying, "no, now was a good time. You too, Josh. I really have to go. I'll see you soon?"

"Not soon enough. Bye."

"Bye."

He hung up the phone, and looked around the hotel suite. He had a call to make, and he knew he should wait till he talked to Donna, but he wanted this out of the way before she got there. He dialed the phone.

"Margaret, it's Josh. Is Leo still in the office? No, I'll hold."


	8. Thursday Night

W.W. –Thursday night

Donna looked out the window at the dark airport runways, with pools of light surrounding each gate. The plane had been delayed in Atlanta, and she was bone tired and nervous and sad and proud and happy.

She was also hungry, and needed a long hot shower. Or she needed a bath, with bubbles and oils and lotions and something suitable girly to wear after. Most of all, she needed to see Josh.

When the plane finally arrived she had to leave the JetWay and go to a tram that would take her to the terminal. The two-minute ride seemed to take forever, and he leaned against the door and bit her lip against screaming.

Today had been too much. She had awoken looking for the man who belonged in her bed. She'd then met his mother again, and her 'gigolo' gentleman friend. She'd been rushed to DC and graduated from college and called into a meeting with Leo where they'd discussed not only her briefing paper, but also her feelings for her boss, the man who had been missing from her bed hours earlier. She'd missed dinner, and missed most of breakfast, and she wasn't sure she'd had anything but a nodding acquaintance with lunch. Today had, simply, been too much.

The doors to the tram opened and she saw the security barrier. Pressed against the tensa-barrier rope line stood Josh Lyman. He had bags under his eyes and a rumpled shirt on with his tie a ruin around his neck. His lips looked dry and his eyes were red, but he was smiling, a smile that said more than the roses he held in one hand.

They weren't red roses. They were long-stemmed cream roses, with a blush of pink at their tips, but as pale and lovely as the woman he waited for. There must have been over a dozen of them, and they were wrapped in dark green paper with sprays of baby's breath flowers among the stems.

In his other hand, Josh held a box. As she got closer, she could see that it was a to-go box from a pizzeria, with a very large cup of coffee perched on top. She could smell the dark roasted goodness from ten feet away.

"Hey," he said as she approached.

She reached the barrier, and took the coffee in one hand. She ducked between the roses and the pizza, and pressed her body against his. Her lips found his mouth, and she tasted coffee and something else, maybe cinnamon. He must have been popping those hard cinnamon candies again to stay awake, something he told her he'd done in college to stay awake during vital study sessions with Sam.

She kissed him a while, and tasted the coffee and the cinnamon and enjoyed the smell and feel of him. After a long while, she pulled back slightly.

"Hey," she replied.

He carried her bag and the pizza, and she sipped a large coffee with double cream and double sugar as they walked to his car. She had her flowers in her hand and was wondering where he had found fresh cut flowers after 2:00 AM. She nibbled her pizza, and offered some to Josh. They were really both too tired and stressed to eat, but she made herself put some calories in to settle the coffee and sugars.

By unspoken consent, they did not talk much in the car on the way balk to the resort. She leaned over a bit in her seat, and put a hand on his thigh as she sipped her coffee and looked out the window. He drove with one hand while reaching out a long arm from time to time to run his hand across the back of her neck, caressing the skin and letting her hair slip through his fingers.

When they finally reached the suite, she noticed that he had moved all the packages off her bed. He had also laid out a nightshirt that she liked and a dressing gown, but they were on his bed, which was turned down.

"I didn't know," he said softly, shrugging, "you know, what you might want to do about sleeping tonight."

"I want to sleep with you tonight," she said. It seemed like those words should have meant more.

"Want me to run you a bath?"

"In the morning?" she asked. He nodded. "Thank you. I want to get changed before we talk, is that okay?"

"Sure. I will too then, if that's okay." He was so respectful it was almost unnerving. She almost missed egotistical self-concerned Josh.

"Sure." Twenty minutes later, both changed for bed and with cleaned teeth, they sat across from each other on the bed.

"First," she told him, "let me tell you about my meeting with the President. I understand why you weren't there, but you'll wish you could have seen it." She reached into her bag by the bed and brought out her diploma, still tied with a ribbon, and began to describe how she'd graduated from college without really trying.

He laughed, and reached over to give her a hug and kiss. She enjoyed it, but then she told him about her meeting with Leo. He was quiet for a long time as she explained what Leo had asked her.

W.W.

Ruth Lyman sat at the edge of a double bed at the Hyatt, with a curtain partly open so she could look out at the early predawn skyline below. She wore an old flannel gown, with a high collar, but her iron-grey hair, still with streaks of rusty red, was combed out and flowed down over her shoulders. She sat erect and quiet in the darkness.

From the other bed she heard Avi sitting up, and putting on his glasses from the night table. When he spoke his voice was deep and rumbling in his chest like a bear's.

"You don't sleep, Ruth?" he asked softly.

"Not so much," she replied, still looking out the window.

"Do you hurt, Bubbeleh? Your pills…?"

"Don't, Avi. The ones that help with the pain, they make me _shvitz_ like I'm in a steam room. The ones that don't make me _shvitz_ also don't make me feel any better. I want to just sit a while. Go back to sleep."

He was getting heavily to his feet. Once a very physical man, Avi Maxwell was finding it harder and harder to keep up with his nephew on their annual walk around the new car show. He knew the day would come when his eyes or his reflexes would take the keys to his new Chrysler from him. Till then, he was determined to live his life, and to come out each day swinging.

He came around to Ruth's bed, and pulled up the chair next to her. From his bag, he'd brought the lotion his nephew's wife made for him, for his shoulder and his wrists when he had been too hard polishing the Chrysler. He grinned at Ruth in the predawn light.

"Your foot, Ruth, give it to me."

She looked at him, and the way he was rubbing cream on his palms. "I don't think so, Avi Maxwell. And here I am, telling my Josh what a gentleman you are." There was a smile in her voice that she managed to keep off her face, but he heard it.

"If you don't put your foot in my lap here, Bubbeleh, I will have to come and get it." He growled like a great big balding bear, and she could see in the morning twilight how broad his shoulders were. He must have been quite a sight in his day. She slowly raised a foot to the edge of his chair, stoic but pained by the feeling in her joints.

Avi waited till she was settled, then began to slowly rub the lotion across her instep, around her ankle, and over her toes. His hands were large and strong, and the cream had mint oil that felt cool as a Connecticut stream on her bare foot. She breathed deeply, letting the breath out in one long sigh as he began to massage the cream into her foot and her tender ankle.

Her eyes closed, and she relaxed, letting the feelings of his hands on her take all the pain and the loneliness and the grief and pull it from her body through the sole of her foot. When he finished, she did not wait to be asked. She raised the other foot, and leaned back till she was lying on her bed with both feet in Avi's lap.

As he worked, he sang a low song under his breath. At first she thought it was something he was just making up as he worked, but then she caught the chorus. It was something her Noah had once brought home, on a Jackie Gleason record called, scandalously, Music to Change Her Mind.

"Some call it madness…" Avi sang softly, allowing his hands to run over her legs as the medicated lotion worked its wonders, along with the long-overdue touch of a man's hands against her skin. The lyrics of Russ Columbo brought a smile to his lips.

"..,I call it love," she sang quietly with him. "You're a _meshegguner_, Avi Maxwell."

"This we both know, Ruth." He patted her leg, and ran his fingers one more time across her toes. They curled in a way that would have pleased her doctor, but for a very different reason.

She reached out with her foot, sliding it across his cotton pajamas, and was rewarded with what she'd hoped to find.

"Avi, dear," she said quietly to him.

"Yes, Ruth?" His eyes were closed and his voice was strained but soft in the morning light.

"Close the curtains." She rubbed her foot against him as he stood. She sat, carefully, to unbutton her gown as he went to the window and savagely threw the curtain closed. He turned, and saw her holding her gown against her pale bosom with one elegant hand, tapered fingers sliding the garment down as he watched till she sat, almost naked before him.

"So are you coming to bed, Mr. Maxwell, or should I find a nice book to read?"

He laughed, and soon he had her laughing too. He meant to put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, but events soon overtook him. He kissed Ruth, and she him, and other things went on that would have shocked his nephew and her son, but not anyone their age who still knew what passion was.

Afterwards, he lay in her bed, her rusty hair fanned across the white curls covering his chest. He looked at the clock.

"Ruth." He looked at her smiling cheek, so pale. He ran a hand through her hair and she stirred. "Ruth, I need to tell my nephew… well, I need to tell him I'm not coming home today."

She looked up at him, savoring the relaxed feeling and the way it made her body feel, and still tingling to her toes from much more than just peppermint lotion. "That's a good idea, Avi. I always knew you were a smart man." She lay her head back down, and they both fell asleep as the sun rose outside their window, greeting another perfect central Florida morning.

W.W.

"Donna."

She rolled over and looked at him. He looked tired, and serious, and sad. She didn't like seeing him that way, and she didn't like that he felt that way at all.

He looked at her, beautiful in the morning light despite the long day and long night before. She'd told him all about the graduation ceremony, and he'd been upset that he'd missed it. He understood why they'd kept him out of the loop- he would have been unable to resist trying to help, and probably just made things harder for her. It seemed to be his talent, if you asked him.

"We have to talk over what happened. With you and Leo, I mean."

"We did talk," she told him, "But you insisted on arguing with me. I just wasn't going to argue with you after the day we both had."

"Well, storming off to bed in the middle of my questions didn't accomplish much."

"You might note that it was your bed I stormed off to, Josh." She propped up on one elbow to look at him. "That should count for something."

"It does. You do." He sat up and shrugged, looking for the words. "You count tremendously. I just need to know why you told Leo that you wouldn't accept reassignment."

"I should think it's obvious, Josh. I'm sure everyone would think it was my feelings for you, but that's not it. It's the team, you and me. I told him, you and I work too well together for me to pack up and move to some new position they haven't even defined yet." She sighed. "Of course, I was hoping he was going to tell me that I was being silly and there was no way we were going to be split up. Instead, he told me to come back down here and talk to you. I get the impression you are supposed to be noble and tell me to leave for my own good."

"Like either one of us thinks that's going to happen," Josh scoffed. "Leo knows it too, Donna. He knows about Alan Parker's offer, and about you and me. I'm not sure how he knew about Alan, but he knew about you and me because I called him. I called him and told him I wanted you reassigned."

"You'd split us up?" She looked at him in disbelief. "But you said there was no way…"

"There's no way that I would split us up just to make some busybody in Government Oversight or the White House Council's Office happy. Donna, I'm a political operative, and there are politics everywhere. I want you to go where you're needed. Chances are I'll find a way to follow you."

She sighed and lay back down, staring at the ceiling. "Chances are? That's not good enough."

"Let me get this straight," she said after a while. "I won't take a new position because I won't leave you, professionally speaking. You won't let me stay because, based on your personal feelings, you want me to succeed. I told Leo I wouldn't leave and you told him you wouldn't let me stay. Is that about right?"

"Yeah, if you want to put it like that." He lay down next to her, and reached over to hold her hand as they lay, staring at the hotel suite ceiling together.

"It's like some perverse 'Gift of the Magi' gone horribly wrong," she said after a while.

"I'm not really up on my O Henry, but didn't the actual 'Gift of the Magi' story go horribly wrong?"

"Shut up, Josh."

"Sorry." He waited a moment before asking, "So, did you also try to sell Leo your hair in exchange for a watch chain?"

"You're not going to let this go, are you?" She was frowning to avoid laughing.

"I'm just saying, it's ironic, because I was really hoping to surprise you with these beautiful combs, and if you've spoiled it, the irony would be…" He looked for the right phrase.

"Exactly like us?" She turned and watched him chuckling. "Do you really want me to take the job? And not work together any more?"

"Well, I want you to be happy. And I want you to be with me. And I want us to find some way of doing both of those things at once." He took her hands to his lips, and brushed a kiss across her palm. "I'm tired of things going the way they were, and the way they have been. I'm ready to start having a life where things with you go the way they _ought_ to go."

"If you took the UCF job, you'd leave when?"

"I'd give Leo my notice, and he'd take it to the President. If the President doesn't object, I'd probably be back here in a month or so. They like to make changes quickly in the West Wing. I hadn't really thought that much about it."

"The job, the thing they wanted me to do… The President and Leo are setting up a council to monitor policy interactions with national and international NGOs. They wanted someone with a history with the administration to be the President's representative. I said they should give it to someone more experienced."

He looked at her and shook his head, "Nah! You'd be great for something like that. Lot's of apparently trivial information, the need to think on your feet, yet weeks going by with nothing to do but read journals and go to conferences. If I was your age I'd do it."

"You're not that much older than me, you know. The thing is, one of the sticking points has been, how do we have any real credibility with NGOs if we're based out of the West Wing. They'd think it was just another policy back channel."

"That's a good point. And may I say, you are a smart girl and not merely decorative after all. Ow!" She had bitten him on a tender spot. "I said you weren't decorative!"

"That wasn't for 'decorative.' That was for 'merely.' And don't be such a sissy. I can't have you getting all girly on me every time I bite you. I plan on getting years and years of use out of you yet."

"Ow! Okay, now stop that. I still say you'd be great at this, and you're crazy to turn it down."

"Yes sir, Professor Lyman. Speaking of crazy."

"Where would the offices be? I mean, budget could come from State, and some from the Executive budget for research. But where are they going to put you?" He was doing federal budget in his head, something that always made his eyebrows waggle and ripple in a way that she found adorable if slightly grotesque.

"They said I could share something over in the OEOB, or maybe even home office if I get decent communications. I can't even get broadband in my apartment now."

Josh sat up again in bed suddenly. "You don't have broadband. Donna, you can't home office because you don't get broadband!"

She sat up too, and pulled the sheet up around her. Josh wasn't wearing a shirt, and she was wearing a sleeveless tee that showed rather a lot of her. It hadn't mattered, tired as they had both been last night. She looked at him, his smile at full force, dimples deep and his hair in chaos. She thought, for just a second that he was the most gorgeous thing she had ever seen. Too bad he was crazy.

"Yeah, poor Donna. What's your point, Josh?"

He turned, and the effect of that beaming grin made her lower lip quiver for a moment. He looked at her, then took her by the shoulder and kissed her hard on the mouth. It lasted just a moment, and then he pulled back.

"Alan's offer. I'd have an office, and a small budget for staff, plus a work area for research, projects, and whatever else I need to grow the prestige of the Leadership Program in the School of Government. Say, for example…"

"Broadband internet access. And I could still be your assistant?" She was starting to see where he was going, and felt her face flushing.

"No!" He corrected her incredulously. "You could be a researcher… oh I don't know, call it the President's Advisor to the NGO liaison office, only something that makes a cool acronym. When I was at Yale, this guy across the hall was on a labor-relations board appointment. He went to like, two union meetings and maybe four conferences in three years, but he mostly did it so he could be on campus and hang out in the student union."

"But the thing, Josh, the important thing, is that we'd still work in the same office, right? You'd do your classes, and I'd make some trips, but whatever, we'd still be working in the same place." It made sense. Too much sense, surely, or they'd be doing it by now.

"Well, I'd have to keep you in shouting distance." He ran a hand down her side as he teased her, and when he got to her hip he gave a little squeeze. "Let's call Leo and see if that would work for the President. I'm sure Alan and I can work it out if the President will sign off on it."

"You really do love me? And you want to keep being around me and working with me, even if I don't work for you?" She wanted to hear it, the insecure part of her wanted to hear this was something other than a way to keep her at his beck and call.

"God, Donna, what do I have to do? Of course I love you. How can you even ask me that after this week?"

"Well, because ever since I got back last night, you haven't even once called me Donnatella." She looked down, and when she looked back up, he was almost crying. He grabbed her in a huge hug, pulling her body to his and rocking them both back and forth.

"Stupid woman," he said without bluster. "I thought I was going to have to send you away. It was for your own good but I was still afraid I couldn't do it. I don't want you to go away, not at all."

"Josh?" she asked, her eyes closed and feeling his arms around her and his breath on her neck.

"Yes, my Donnatella?" He was running his hands over her back and along her shoulders as he hugged her. His touch was making her excited, but his words sent a burst of fireworks off behind her eyes.

There it was, she thought, the one thing she'd needed to hear. Not love, not promises. Just her name, the name only he used, and to be called his. It was fair, as he was hers, after all. She leaned in and put her lips against his ear.

"I wasn't going to let you out of this bed till you had worked this out. And I knew you would, too. My sweet, crazy Josh."

"Really," he moaned softly at her whispering. "You're not just saying that you knew, to take credit? You really knew? How can I know you're not just saying that?"

She ran the tip of her tongue over the edge of his ear, slowly down to his earlobe, which she briefly captured in her lips. After a moment she released his ear and breathed her words to him with a smirk.

"Of course I knew you'd figure something out, Josh. That's why I'm not wearing panties." She tugged at the sheet between them, and then stretched a long, limber leg over him. She pulled herself up, so that he was sitting up and she was straddling him. He wound up with his face between her breasts and his arms around her waist.

"Oh, my God," came his muffled voice as he began nuzzling her. His hands reached down to cup her bottom, supporting her on his lap and easing the pressure as he rapidly hardened beneath her. He looked up, suddenly very wary, almost afraid.

"Donnatella, are you sure? We can wait…" His voice trailed off unconvincingly. Her laughter made her breasts bounce and sway under the thin tee and he groaned again.

"Josh, if you don't make love to me right now, I'm turning on the TV and finding a story on that biopic!"

"Ah! That breaks today! I completely forgot." As he was speaking his hands were caressing her bottom and he was slowly rocking her back and forth over his lap, driving them both mad, well, more mad, with anticipation. "So, you want to go get the papers? Maybe there's something good about us."

"You are an evil old man, Josh Lyman, and you'll come to a bad end I'm sure." She was trying to ignore what he was doing with his hands. His mouth, even through the tee shirt, was teasing her nipples past the point of hardness and to the edge of painful.

"No, little girl, I think I'm coming to a very good end," he teased, doing something to her bottom with his thumbs. She wasn't sure what it was, but she made a note to sure as hell find out. Later. "A very good end indeed," he chuckled.

As she arched her back, moaning loudly and flexing her thigh muscles, she pulled briefly up and away from him. He took the moment to release her sex from his hand ('Hey! Where are you going!' she thought wildly) and do something in the slight gap between their bodies.

When she rocked back towards him, she realized he'd parted the fly of his boxers, and without the slightest extra effort, he slipped inside her. It was filling, shocking, an electric moment. She lost control of her muscles briefly and so she lowered herself even more heavily on to him.

Inside her, she could feel her body reacting, accepting. He didn't thrust into her, he just held her as her eyes flew wide with the total sensation, the totality of making love to him. He held her, surrounding her body with his loving arms. She held him, surrounding him more intimately with her body. Even through her tee shirt, the friction of her nipples against his chest as her heart beat was delirious, a riot of over-stimulation.

Through clenched teeth, she hissed a whispered plea to him.

"Say it," she begged. Oh God, she thought, please get this right.

"I love you," he said looking her right in the eye, without the slightest hesitation. His voice was warm and strong, and without him moving so much as another muscle, his voice was enough.

She closed her eyes, and an orgasm began somewhere behind her navel and washed in slow moving waves over her whole body. She felt it in her diaphragm as she tried to breath in, in her knees and ankles, in her throat. She felt the muscles of her jaw tighten and then relax, leaving her to loll her head in slack-jawed wonder, and still she felt it. She felt it in her eyelids and her hands, her fingers wrapped in his hair, she felt it to her scalp and the roots of her hair.

He didn't move another muscle, yet she felt like a tuning fork struck, like a bell ringing clear, like she was suspended from a string that went in at the top of her head and connected all the way down to her toes. For how many heartbeats she hung suspended she did not know, but as it receded she panted and swayed, holding on to him as though she was afraid she'd be spun off in to space.

"Donnatella?" His voice was soft. He was pretty sure he knew what had happened, but it wasn't something that occurred every day, and he wanted to be sure whatever had just happened was as good for her as it looked. "Donna, you okay?"

"Gravity," she breathed. She took another breath, and every muscle that moved sang with the memory of what had just happened, and also reminded her that he was still inside her, still pressing against her all over in a way that must be what they mean when they say Tantric, but she wasn't sure. Even in her head she knew she was babbling.

She tried again to explain. "Gravity fails," she said.

He waited, but that was all she could tell him. He ventured a small movement, and they rocked together and apart slightly in a slow and gentle motion, like the surf lapping at the shore. They retreated a bit from that amazing communion of bodies, and it became merely fabulous sex, but at the edges there was a memory of something more. He felt no urge to push, to rush to an ending. He didn't need to recite Mets statistics, or the Bill of Rights.

He enjoyed her, and she enjoyed him, and after a time he was spent, and she was tired, and they moved apart just enough to lie back down. They slept, and dreamed, bodies still entwined, and it was good.


	9. Friday Afternoon

W.W. –Friday afternoon

"Josh… uh… Josh Lyman," a groggy voice finally answered.

"Donna? It's C.J.," said the press secretary, as she watched her goldfish, Gail, swimming in lazy arcs in the bowl at the edge of her desk. "Hello, Donna?"

There were muffled sounds at the end of the line, and then Josh came on, sounding at least as out of it as Donna had.

"Josh Lyman," he stated with the precision of overcompensation.

"Josh, it's C.J. I take it you've seen the Post?" She figured there must be a very emotional scene going on down in Florida right now. She was a little worried about how Josh and Donna were taking the rapid escalation of the biopic story.

"Uh, sure. It's here somewhere. Donna, where's the Post." This was followed by an intelligible response, and Josh's _sotto voce_ reply escaped C.J. The giggles that followed were inescapable, however.

"Joshua Lyman!" C.J. barked into the phone. "Are you giggling? I hear giggling."

"No! Um, no. (stop that!) I, uh, was looking for the Post. I mean the paper." More giggling.

"Oh, God. Josh, stop leering and pay attention."

"How did you know I was leering?" He sounded offended.

"I didn't till just now," raged C.J. "Need I point out that you are amazingly stupid?"

"No, that point has been pretty much beaten to death. Is there something particular I'm being stupid about now? Just for my reference."

"The Post has a bullet headline, about you and Donna." C.J. sighed. "It was supposed to be a few puff pieces about the biopic, and a quick 'The White House does not comment on the personal lives of its staff.' Then you had to go and get hormonal and ruin all my careful spin."

"But C.J., unless the Post has a source under our bed, there isn't anything for them to report. Or there wasn't till this morning anyway."

"Someone saw you giving her flowers in the airport, Josh. What were you… Wait. 'Our bed'? Good God, Josh! Do you even hear yourself? Don't answer any questions about anything, and refer everything to my office. I'll call you back when I know more."

"You got it, C.J., mi amore." He sounded unruffled. "I have to talk to Leo this morning. You want me to tell him anything?"

"This morning? Josh, it's after 2:00 in the afternoon. Get out of bed and get your head screwed on straight. Oh," she took a deep breath, and shouted at the phone, "And get some damned pants on!"

She hung up. She rested her head on her desk briefly.

"Poor Donna. Well, lucky girl, but still, poor Donna."

She sat up. "Carol? Get me Ed and Larry, and tell Margaret I'm going to need Leo as soon as he's back from the OMB meeting."

W.W.

"So you're sure you want to do this?" Leo was cradling the phone in one hand. In the other, he held a photo taken at one of the inaugural balls, with Leo surrounded by the senior staff. He'd had it sent up from Media. Sam Seaborne, Toby Ziegler, and C.J. Craig stood to one side. Josh Lyman was on the other, laughing, with his arm around the shoulders of a blushing Donna Moss. They all looked so damned young.

He'd taken Josh's call during his budget meeting, but pretty quickly it became apparent he needed to take this call in his office. He'd listened to his DCOS stammer his way through an explanation. He was already feeling the bittersweet musings that come when saying goodbye to a friend, a trusted member of the team. Sad for the ending, but at the same time, he was happy that Josh had finally started to get some things straight with Donna. She was a good kid. Hell, they were both good kids. Maybe it would work out.

"I understand. Yeah, I have your faxes right here. C.J.'s on her way over, I'll talk to her about it when she gets here. Nah, the President will talk to you when you get back, but we'll get it done. I think your idea for a replacement is going to make or break the deal."

"Oh, and Josh… does your mom really have a new boyfriend?" He laughed at the sputtering coming from the other end of his phone.

"Take care, Josh. See you Monday."

He hung up the phone.

"Margaret? Send in C.J., and tell me if you see Toby lurking around out there too, we might as well make it a quorum."

Margaret came in, but she waved off C.J. with a quick gesture. "Just a moment C.J., please." She closed the door and stood looking at Leo.

"Yes? Did you want something Margaret, or is this a moment of quiet reflection in lieu of prayer?"

Her eyes got very big and she spoke rapidly. "We, that is, the other assistants, we were just wanting you to know that we understand that whatever happens with the TV thing, we understand, I mean, we understand if you feel you need to clarify policies or whatever. But before you go cracking down you ought to know that Donna has always been very professional."

"That's a comfort to me, but I don't recall appointing you Hall Monitor," he said, treating her to a moderately sour look. "Was that all?"

"Well, yeah." She went to open the door, "Except, well, if anyone gets fired, it better not be Donna."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are you threatening me, Margaret?"

"I'm just saying, we know where all the toner is, and how the coffee re-order forms need to be filled out. Bonnie knows Donna's filing system, and Carol has the emergency key to my cabinet. Ginger knows where those really good muffins you like come from. I'm just saying."

"Margaret- Out! C.J., Toby- In!" He shouted, trying hard not to smile.

They were all good kids, really.

"Leo, I've spoken to our problem child, and I think we can-" C.J. started before he waved her off.

"C.J., Toby, we need to draft two releases, one for the afternoon briefing, another for tonight just before C.J. puts the lid on." He saw he had their attention.

"For immediate release, Miss Donnatella Moss, formerly Special Assistant to the DCOS, has been named to head the Presidential Council on International NGO Liaison Activities. Details will be available in a briefing from State on Monday. The President and the White House thank Miss Moss for her service and wish her the best in her new position."

It took a moment to sink in. Toby looked at Leo, then at C.J. He spoke first, softly.

"This position, it is outside the White House?"

"It is. Funded by a trust set up by several bipartisan groups, it's a university endowment that serves to advise the President, not to make policy." Leo waited for the comment,

"Josh will be… difficult." He looked sad, and was rubbing his scalp over his right eye with his thumb in an often-imitated gesture.

"There were two announcements." C.J. was looking thoughtful.

"Yeah. We're going to need a new DCOS. I have on my desk here a letter of resignation from our Deputy Chief of Staff. The President is going to accept it formally on Monday."

"Leo, you can't…" Toby's mouth worked silently for a moment. "What don't I know about? You know something."

C.J. started grinning. Leo caught it and threw her a wink, which made Toby even more agitated. "Come on, Leo, what's… oh. Oh."

Toby looked at C.J. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," she affirmed.

"About time," Toby said gruffly. "Maybe we can get a new Deputy who isn't so distracted by his Special Assistant?"

"And vice versa," C.J. pointed out.

"And vice versa, yes." Toby inhaled sharply and moved on. "Now, can we do some, you know, governing, today, maybe?"

"I doubt it very much," Leo said. "Start rounding up the Senior Assistants. If this gets out before we can bring them on board, it's going to make a gossip piece in the Post look like just the first shot."

They took off for the bullpen and the communications offices, Toby already jotting notes in one of the half dozen notebooks he routinely carried. C.J. was picking the best reporters to leak the story, to maximize the positive spin. Steve had always had a soft touch, she thought. He'd know how to run with this.

"Margaret!" Leo's call caught his assistant going through her purse looking for some mints, and she shot up from her desk like he'd goosed her behind. She hurried in, smoothing her sweater and trying to look calm.

"Yes?"

"Close the door." He looked awfully stern, even for Leo.

"Yes, sir? You know about before, I didn't meant to imply any kind of… of strike or anything." She was really wishing she'd found a mint. Her mouth was very dry.

"Relax, Norma Rae." He leaned back in his chair, and grinned. It was his Grinch-carving-the-Roast-Beast grin. "I thought you might enjoy being the first Senor Assistant to hear some good news, for a change."


	10. Friday Evening

W.W. –Friday evening

"Mom, Avi, thanks for coming. I'm glad you decided to stay another day." Josh looked at his mother and wondered again if she was blushing. Best not to think about it.

"Why should we rush home, Josh?" Ruth took a sip of wine and looked around the restaurant. "I mean, when you take us to such a dinner as this?" She laughed, but it was at the idea, not at their surroundings.

"Donna picked this all out, Mom. I had no idea they had anything like this at Disney."

Donna blushed, and said diffidently, "I read on line that the Victoria and Albert was Orlando's only 5-star restaurant the last three years running, according to Triple-A… and I like that we can take the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom for fireworks later."

Avi Maxwell, speaking up for the first time, indicated the Royal Daulton china and the crystal stemware. "You pick a very nice place, Donna. We thank you for your invitation. I imagine today has not been fun for you?"

"The news stories were a little more than we'd hoped for," Josh admitted. "I supposed we were too optimistic that leaving the capitol would change much."

"Josh," Ruth Lyman looked at her son with determination, "I don't know from television, but I know you. For the last ten years, maybe twenty, you have always been busy. Elections, campaigns, what have you. Successful- sometimes yes, sometimes no. Always looking ahead to the next fight, maybe. Tonight, since you finally admit your feelings for this girl, you look happy."

She reached over and patted his cheek. "Such happiness I thought I'd never see again in you. It's good for you. It's good for me."

"It's good for me, too." Josh said, and took a sip of wine. He looked at Donna, and she reached over and took his hand. "And if you like that, you'll love this: We've spoken to Leo, and talked it over a lot between the two of us. Donna and I are both leaving the administration."

If he had been waiting for the shock, he would be waiting still. Ruth and Avi just nodded and waited for him to continue. "Okay, you don't seem surprised."

"You found something else, yes?" Avi asked gently. "Something maybe where you can be together?"

"There's a teaching position open for Josh," Donna told him. She trusted herself a little more talking to Avi than to Ruth. She was a little afraid of being the _goyisheh_ blonde who stole Ruth's little boy's heart. "I'll still be doing some work for the President, but I'm going to office on campus."

"This is great news, Donna," Avi enthused. "The two of you together, working where? Georgetown?"

"That's just the thing," Josh squeezed Donna's hand. "Mom, we're coming to UCF, here in Orlando. We were hoping you could come visit once we get settled. You too, Avi, of course."

Ruth looked down for a moment, and then she lifted her eyes and looked carefully at her son. "This is what you want, Josh? They aren't sending you away?"

"No, Mom. I've talked it over with Leo, and he agrees. It's time, the, the changes, I guess, with Donna and me, have just changed our timetables a bit. This will be good for me." He looked to Donna. "For us."

Avi raised his glass, and they all followed. "Joshua, Donnatella. _Mazel tov_."

W.W.

The President stood in the doorway to Leo's office, shadowed by his protective detail. He was nodding as he listed to his old friend.

"And you're sure this is the best way to handle this? Josh isn't being noble, he really wants this?"

Leo thought for a few seconds. "Yeah. Yeah, I think he really does. And it's a good fit, I think."

"He'll be an interesting professor, that's a certainty," mused the President.

"I was actually talking about the other thing." Leo grinned his lopsided grin and the President chuckled.

"Yeah." He shook his head. "I guess I better go tell Abby before she hears it round the water cooler. She always did like those two."

"Well, we all do, Mr. President."

"That too. I better get going, I think Special Agent Casper has been waiting all this time to talk to you, when he really ought to be out, you know, solving crimes." The President pitched his voice to reach the agent under discussion, who as usual was avoiding the limelight and trying to avoid presidential notice as well. Unusual for DC, the young FBI agent really preferred actually doing his job to getting noticed doing it.

"Good night Mr. President." Leo stood up, and waved the young FBI agent in past the departing Secret Service detail. "Mike, thanks for waiting."

"Not at all, sir. I have the report you asked for on Watertown, and I had been hoping to say hello to Josh. I understand he's still out of town?"

Leo snapped his fingers. "I knew there was something. Excuse me just a moment, Mike."

"Of course, sir." Casper had a way of standing casually that screamed out that he wanted to be standing at attention, but was trying to act casual. Not a natural for undercover work, that one.

"Margaret! Before I forget again, we need to send something, flowers I guess, to Ruth Lyman and her new friend, uh, Avi Maxwell. They're at the Hyatt in Orlando. Take care of it?"

Margaret poked her head in, looking shocked. "Flowers?"

"Yes?" He wasn't so sure, the way she looked.

"You're sending a woman flowers, at the hotel where she and her new boyfriend are staying?"

"Ah. Yeah."

"I'm thinking fruit basket, Leo."

"Yeah. Yes, thanks Margaret."

He turned back to Casper. "Sorry about that. Josh's mom is an old friend, she and her new boyfriend, I guess, are up from West Palm Beach seeing Josh and Donna. They… well, it's all over the TV, and I'm sure you have sources."

"I really couldn't comment sir." This guy is so square, Leo thought. I love it. I thought they didn't make G-men like that any more.

"Thanks for the report. We appreciate you running it by in person, and I'll have Josh give you a buzz when he's back Monday."

"That's okay, sir. I'll call him myself. Have a good night."

"You too, Mike." Leo went back to clearing his notes for the day and getting ready to head back to is hotel suite. Sometimes he still missed Jenny, but he had to admit having the suite alone for brooding and reading at all hours actually helped his nights some.

W.W.

Mike Casper was in his car, heading back over to his office. He dialed his department desk on his secure cell.

"Watch Commander Milton." Vicki Milton sounded like she had just clocked in, not like she was ostensibly five minutes from the end of her shift.

"Special Agent Casper. I need you to pull a file for me and have it on my desk when I get there, please." He drove automatically, his mind busy processing.

"Yes, sir?" Mike Casper wasn't a typical DC player, despite being a career FBI agent with an eye towards eventual advancement. If he called in a file request, unlike some agents Milton could name, it was because he thought it was important, not because he thought she had nothing better to do.

"The subject is Avi Maxwell of West Palm Beach, Florida." He thought back, and wasn't surprised that the file came to mind. "Check the Casebook Sonic files, file number 11157856."

"Yes, sir. It will be on your desk when you get here, sir."

"Thanks, Vicki."

He pulled in to the parking garage. So. Avi Maxwell, and Josh Lyman's mother. Interesting.


	11. Saturday

W.W. –Saturday morning

"Donna!"

She looked herself over in the mirror. Her hair was still damp, but her makeup was on and she looked reasonably presentable. She looked at the fine shadings of color where a certain rather amorous DCOS had been marking his territory earlier.

"Donna?" At least he was varying the shouting.

She ducked her head out and saw him sprawled across the bed. He still wasn't dressed, but he had brushed his hair and brought the papers in and divided them into 'hers, mine and ours' stacks.

"Honestly, Josh, what do you want? You're yelling like this was the West Wing."

He flashed her a grin, and looked admiringly at the open robe that she wore.

"I missed you." He patted the bed. "Come back to bed. I'll order breakfast."

She laughed. "Missed me? It's too late for breakfast, mostly because you wouldn't let me out of bed at a reasonable hour. What on earth happened to my lovable workaholic Josh?"

She came back towards him, and he pulled her down onto the bed into the middle of the newspapers. She laughed, and he started kissing her on the tip of her nose and along her eyebrows. She pushed him off of her and looked at him, holding him at arms' length.

"You, sir, are a bad man. I was promised breakfast, oh, hours ago, and now it's too late for breakfast."

He rolled over on top of her. She loved the way he looked down at her, like she was the whole world and he was trying in vain to take her all in at once with his eyes.

"Tell me again why we didn't do this years ago?" she teased him.

"Because you weren't ready," he answered without hesitation.

"What?" She tried to push him off of her, and when he didn't immediately respond she heaved him to one side and sat up. "_I_ wasn't ready? I wasn't _ready_?" It sounded just as bad no matter how she accented the line. "And how the hell do you figure that?"

"Donna," he started, reaching for her. Then, seeing how upset she was, he sat up and let her see his unguarded honest-face. "Donnatella Moss, do you believe I love you?'

"Yes, but-" she said and he held up a hand to her lips. "Yes," she said softly against his fingers.

"Okay, do you believe that you are valuable to me, both personally and professionally?"

"Yes." She made no move to continue, but he kept his fingertips against her lips. She thought he'd forgotten why they were there and he was just enjoying the feeling. She was, too, actually.

"And do you further believe that you are a smart, successful and capable woman, worthy of responsibility and trust? I ask you to recall that you have recently earned, not merely been given but earned, a college degree and a Presidential appointment. So, you acknowledge that you are a professional political operative with both status and influence?"

"Apparently."

"Well, I imagine if we had done this before, oh, any time really, that I'd be spending the next 30 years convincing you that you really were amazing and worthwhile and special, and you'd always be wondering if I was saying that to justify why I was sleeping with you." He looked a little serious, and very solemn. It was kind of eerie.

"Josh?" He took his hand away from her lips. "You're forgetting something."

"What's that?" He was puzzled.

"If those things weren't true, if I was just some politically savvy hussy who could bring the banter and fill out an evening gown, you would still have slept with me. So you'd be trying to convince yourself too."

He rolled back and stared up at the ceiling. "I'd never have slept with you before, Donna. I mean, I noticed you, I won't pretend I never thought about it, but I wouldn't have done anything. Not till now, not till it was a way to move on to the next part of our lives."

"Why not? I mean you know I love you, and I'll never say anything about this again if you don't want me to, but honestly, Josh, Mandy? And Amy? And still more Amy? If I still have any doubts it was because I've seen your taste in women."

"You seemed to like Joey Lucas," he said, still examining the ceiling. He didn't seem ready to look her in the eye yet.

"No, _you_ seemed to like Joey Lucas and I wanted you to be happy."

"I'm happy now," he said.

"Really? Even knowing that when we get back, it's going to be tough trying to go back to the way things were?" She couldn't keep the sad tone out of her voice completely, and he caught it. He sat up and looked at her.

"You think I'm worried about that? About how things look in the office?" he laughed, and she looked at him sharply trying to figure out if he was laughing at her or at the idea.

"Donna, Donna, my love," he reached out and took her hands, and started kissing her palms one after the other back and forth, "My dear, my love, my only. If you think I can work another month in the West Wing while they find our replacements, work with you like nothing ever happened, you're clearly even more insane than I gave you credit for."

"Well, you can't just run around saying, 'Hi everyone! I'm leaving, but before I go I want you all to know I'm _shtupping_ my assistant!' It would be bad for office efficiency." His kisses on her hands were arousing her, and her voice was getting the husky tone it had so often lately. God, she was totally transparent.

"You do realize you're not Jewish, right? Because you're getting this thing where you… anyway, yeah, yes. I know I can't run around telling everyone I'm sleeping with my assistant. Soon to be former assistant."

"So, I take it from your smug tone you have a plan. Perhaps similar to your secret plan to fight inflation?" She started collecting the papers and trying to restore some order.

"I gave Leo a name... let's just say if it works out, you and I will be the last thing on the minds of the press corps, okay? Tell you what, there's nothing left but busywork on the schedule today anyway, let's go over to Epcot, ride that test track thing you wanted, and we can sample our way through all the restaurants for brunch?"

"You mean it?" She knew she was sounding gushing and girlish, but hey, Disney World. She pumped her fist in the air. "My soon to be former boss rocks!"

It took longer than they expected to get ready, a delay that she thoroughly enjoyed even though it meant reapplying her lipstick and combing her hair out yet again. By the time they got to the theme park, they were both hungry enough to skip the rides and get straight to eating.

They particularly enjoyed the China and Japan pavilions, with drummers and dragon dances and lots of tasty tidbits to nibble. Donna was willing to spend all day in the Mikimoto department store, where she spent wildly on souvenirs for her soon to be former coworkers. C.J. got a silk robe, Margaret had a scarf, and Bonnie and Ginger got fans and little ceramic cats. The cats were to bring good fortune, and she got a somewhat smaller and more discrete one for Toby. She got herself some beautiful black lacquered chopsticks to use when she put her hair up.

She went looking for Josh, feeling guilty for spending so much time (and more than a little of his money, as he had insisted that he pay for at least half of the office presents). She found him at the counter, getting a small parcel wrapped.

"What did you find there, O Captain My Captain?" She glided up behind him and settled with her chin on his shoulder. "Something for Leo? Because I can't find anything for Leo or Charlie."

"As a matter of fact, I did find something for Charlie." He led out a small book to her. "It's all poetry about the life of the Bushi, these elite warriors in service to the emperor. Apparently, service and absolute loyalty weren't enough, they were supposed to be artists and poets too."

"I'm sure the President would approve." She said this quietly, not wanting to draw too much attention to the fact that they worked for the President of the United States and were making snuggle-bunnies all over Disney World.

"I hope so, since I got him a book about the evolution of the samurai code of honor in the Kamakura Shogunate. I have no idea what that is but it sounded esoteric, so there you go."

"Is that what's in the wrapping?" She said, trying to see what he was putting in his pockets and what was being sent back to the suite. "Or is that for Leo?"

"I have no idea what to get for Leo, Donna. And no, this is not for the President. Stop fishing." He pretended to sound stern, and she lit up like a sparkler.

"Ooh, someone got something for me? Is that what you're saying?"

"Go on to the bazaar in the Morocco pavilion, would you? I need to take care of a few things here before we go." He was trying so hard to sound casual, she was tempted to hang around being helpful and watch him go crazy. Still, if he wanted to surprise her, she ought to give him a fighting chance.

"Oh, okay, but don't be too long." She batted her eyelashes at him melodramatically. "A pale defenseless thing like me, alone in a Moroccan _sook_? I'll be in a harem by tea time if you don't come save me."

"I'm counting on it. I need the rest." He leaned over and kissed her cheek. It was the first time he had so casually showed affection in public, and she was thrilled at how good it felt. "Now go, woman, and let me do the thing."

She grinned, and pulled her Minnie ears out of her bag. Fixing them firmly on her head, she winked and grinned, and was off to the marketplace. Maybe Leo would like some Moroccan brass…somethings. Maybe not.

W.W.

Josh turned back to the patient lady behind the counter, and nodded to her. She brought his remaining gift out from under the counter and raised her eyebrow at him in an unspoken request.

"_Hai, arigatou gozaimasu_." That was about all the Japanese he remembered from his crash course before the last trade talks, but it was enough. The woman smiled at him as she rapidly wrapped the gift in elegantly folded paper.

He stashed the small parcel in his pocket securely, and signed to have the other items sent to his room. On an impulse, he added a long, dark emerald green kimono in what he hoped was Donna's size, and had that sent as well. Might as well spend his all his remaining mad money today, since they were going home tonight.

As he hurried towards the faux-Arabian marketplace, he looked for Donna amid the sea of tourists. He spotted her just outside the Morocco pavilion, her bag held securely between her ankles as she lined up a camera to take a picture for an old man, his son and daughter-in-law, and his grandchildren. They were all laughing, and she was calling to them in halting Italian.

"_Unitamente_! Um, closer? Closer! _Buono_! _Buono_!"

"_Grazzie_, _Signorina_," the older man told her, taking the camera from her as Josh came up to them. "_Scusa_, _Signora_?"

"No, no, signorina." she blushed as Josh came up and put his arm around her.

"_Grazzie, e buon giorno_." He nodded at Josh, and they started off. Donna got her bag back on her shoulder. She looked back at Josh.

"What? Come on, what?" She wondered why he was looking at her that way.

"Nothing," he said as the Italian family moved along the wide promenade around the Showcase of Nations lagoon. "You just still surprise me, that's all."

"Well, you know I'm half Italian. Mom speaks a little, but papa Fiorello hardly spoke anything else." She took his arm and they began walking back towards the entrance. It was about time to start packing up, but neither of them wanted to admit it.

"Fiorello, like Laguardia?" He grinned, enjoying the sunshine and the happy faces around him. No one was yelling, no one was fighting or smoking or trying to cut Social Security. He'd been to Disney before, but he hadn't really seen it till he'd come with Donna.

"He's the one that left the Catholic church- grandma was his second wife and they married in her Presbyterian church. I always liked his name. It means little flower. I think it's important that names have meanings. Take Joshua- you know what it means, right?"

"Sure. 'Jehovah saves.' Very biblical. Maybe a little rah-rah for my tastes but I've never been all that religious. Now, your name is a winner."

She grimaced and he could feel it in her body language. "Donna means woman. Big whoop. And Donnatella is just a long form of Donna."

"Beg to differ," he said, putting his arm around her and letting his hand rest on her hip. "According to babynamesworld dot com, 'Donatella' with one 'n' is Italian too, and it means beautiful star. You just got an extra 'n.' I guess because they knew you were going to be extra beautiful."

She stopped and looked at him. "You're kidding me, right? And what on earth were you doing at babynameswhatever dot com?"

It was his turn to stammer and blush. "Nothing. Just, you know, wondering about names, trying to find something I know that you don't, that doesn't involve politics."

"How about this?" She leaned in and kissed him briefly, and pulled back smiling. "I love you, and you love me, and that is the one thing in our lives we can always count on, no matter what else we screw up along the way."

"Well yeah," he said, taking her by the arm again as they headed back to the hotel for the last time, "but I knew that."

W.W. –Saturday evening

As they rode the monorail train back to the resort, Donna laid her head on Josh's chest and closed her eyes. She was memorizing every sensation, every sight and smell and taste, for playback over the years to come. She realized Josh had said something, and she'd missed it.

"What was that, sorry?"

"I said, 'Do you ever wonder what it would be like to bring kids here?' I see all the strollers and the bags and, the, you know, all the stuff that goes with kids. It would be like planning the Normandy landings."

"You think about kids?" She was trying to watch his face. She knew this was an important question, but she was tired and comfortable, and leaning on his chest it was so tempting to close her eyes and just cuddle till the monorail stopped. She blinked hard and looked at him owlishly.

"Maybe," he admitted. "I think about lots of things. It's what I do, I'm a thinker."

"I like the way you think," she admitted, and lay her head back down on him. This was all just too good.

The train came to a stop. "Donnatella," he said, sitting up straighter and forcing her to lift her head. "This is our stop, little star."

"Can we take a nap before we pack up?"

"No, but we can sleep on the train, okay? I promise."

"Humph," she grumped as they left the monorail platform and headed towards the hotel. "I remember the last time, I didn't get much sleep at all."

"Promises, promises," he teased, and she grinned despite herself. She wondered how they were going to fit everything into Josh's car for the trip back to the Autotrain and to DC.

W.W.

"Hey C.J., I got a message that you called."

"I'm sorry, Steve." C.J. said, pulling her long legs up and propping her feet on her desk. "I'm sure there was something, but I couldn't tell you what, sorry."

"Well," drawled the reporter casually, "I'm sure that it wasn't anything important. So I guess there isn't anything the White House needs to comment on tonight?"

"No, nothing at all." C.J. looked out her doorway and then said with absolute naturalism, "Of course, I'd heard that someone told you that Josh Lyman is not being moved out as part of any political maneuvering, but rather was making a move to be closer to his family."

"Yeah, I did hear that." C.J. could hear Steve's pen flying across his notepad. "I also heard something about him and his assistant…?"

"Nothing new or noteworthy, I'm sure," C.J. corrected him, "Of course they have both worked in the administration for years and it would be understandable if they decided pursue other opportunities after their long and professional service."

"Ah, that must be what I heard." There was silence for a moment except for the rustling of papers at his end. "I suppose I heard this from highly placed sources in the administration?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. I'd say that friends in the White House were pleased to confirm that the Deputy Chief of Staff and his Senior Assistant were both accepting prestigious positions outside the administration." Her wording was as close to a public coming out party as the couple would get from official Washington, and she knew Steve would get word around once his story broke,

"Well, I'm sorry to bother you then, C.J. Thanks for your time."

"Sure enough, Steve. See you Monday."

"Oh, and C.J.?"

"Yes?" The protocol of the official leak was as unchanging as a Japanese tea ceremony, and she was curious about what he else wanted.

"If you happen to talk to Joshua Lyman or Donna Moss again this weekend, tell them we all said congratulations."

"Well, I'll be sure to do that, Steve. Thanks." She hung up, and looked at the phone for a moment. "What an old softy." She grinned and went back to work, trying to clear her desk and head home for the rest of the weekend.


	12. Saturday Night

W.W. –Saturday night

Josh was sitting on the edge of the bed in the small train compartment, looking out the window as the lights of the darkening countryside rolled past. His face was relaxed but his eyes were fixed, lost in thought as he let the train carry him back to Washington.

"Penny, Josh?" Donna asked as she came back into the compartment from the small washroom. She was wearing flannel pajama bottoms and his Harvard shirt.

"Sorry, what?" He blinked a few times as he came back to earth from wherever he'd been for the last half hour.

"A penny," she repeated, "you know, for your thoughts." She sat down next to him.

"I'm not sure I was actually thinking." He shrugged after a moment. "Just, you know, trying to imagine this coming week."

"Are you scared?" Her tone said that she almost hoped he'd say yes. She didn't know if she wanted to him to be scared with her, or to have him be decisive and sure so she could be scared without having to be the strong one.

"I don't think so. It's like when I left college. I loved school, the challenges and the late nights and the constant competition. I knew where I stood and I knew where I was going. When it was over, I was sad to go but I was eager to get on with the next thing." He took her hand in his. "This is like that."

"There are going to be people who think that you're taking a step down, you know," she told him. "They're going to say that I took you off the fast track, that you're throwing something away."

"There are people who say that the moon landings were filmed in a warehouse in Burbank, Donna. Some people are just idiots." He watched her grin flash, then fade. "Come on, Donna. I'm excited to be working with students, to make a new generation of bright kids think that maybe government is worthwhile. If just one takes to public service like you did, I'll have had a successful career."

"So you're out looking for impressionable coeds to take my place already?" She grinned openly this time.

"Only at the White House, not in my life." He frowned. "I do wonder a bit what they'll say about you. You know there will always be people, and not just republicans, who want to think the worst of any woman who winds up involved with someone in a position of power or authority. I wish I could protect you from that."

"Do you love me?" She raised her eyebrows.

"Well, yeah," he replied like she was being silly.

"Are you going to stay with me, and take care of me and let me take care of you?"

"Yes." He nodded solemnly while slipping a hand up under her shirt in the back to rub her bare skin.

She smiled and leaned against him. "Well then, I say screw those people."

He laughed and put his other arm around her. "Well, I have a better idea, actually…"

She sighed, and shook her head. "You're crazy. Certifiable and-."

She bolted upright and looked at him with eyes like saucers.

"Josh, what day is today?"

"It's Saturday. Um, the 8th, why?" He reached out to her and she shrugged off his hand.

"Oh. Oh, damn it. Crap, crap, crap." She was talking fast and had grabbed her satchel, the big bag she'd brought all her personal items in. "No, no, no," she chanted softly.

"Okay, this is now officially freaking me out, Donna. Are you going to tell me what's wrong or-" he stopped and watched with dawning realization as she took a small, plastic oval from the bottom of her bag and popped it open.

"Is that… That's what I think it is, isn't it?" he asked softly.

She was examining four rows of color-coded pills, a number of which had been punched out. She kept counting the punched out spaces and getting the same answer. "Well," she said softly, "shit."

It shook him, her cursing, more than the situation. He'd never seen her this way before, even when she was furious at him, or scared for her job, or for his.

"Donna, it's okay. Everything is going to be okay." He wanted to take her in his arms, to be comforting and supportive and not, you know, him, for a minute.

"Sure," she said, looking at him for reassurance. "It's not like no one's ever missed a pill before… or five. Damn, five. I'm probably fine. You know, what are the odds, just one or two times."

"Well, more like six or seven times," he reminded her warily. He didn't want her to panic but he also wanted her to face what was going on with accurate information.

Her face fell. "Eight times," she said after a moment, looking past him at the blank wall.

"Are you sure?" they were both doing the count in their heads. "First night, then before breakfast… then second day… Oh," he said, remembering.

"Walk-in shower," they said together, nodding.

"Don't worry, I'll be fine. You know, whatever happens, I'll be fine." She started punching out some pills. "You don't have to worry."

"We," he said. "We'll be fine. Right?"

She nodded, not listening, and started to get up with a number of pills in her hand.

"Donna," he said, taking her by the hips as she tried to go past, "what are you doing? Are you listening to me?"

"The pills," she waved her hand, a closed fist around the missed pills, "I remember from college, you're supposed to take them right away. It can help your body to- Well, it can help. Just in case. At least I think that's what they said."

"Donna, can't we talk about this? I think this is something we should talk about, don't you?" He wished she would just sit and talk to him.

"It's my fault. I should have been more careful, but with everything going on, and it's been so long since I was, since I needed to worry about them, I just forgot. They're always with my toothpaste and this time they were in the bag. I can't believe I forgot."

He stood, and suddenly she was in his arms. Her cheek was moist against his chest and she realized she was crying. "I'm sorry, Josh. I'm really sorry."

"Hush," he chided, kissing her on top of her head and holding her against him. "It's my fault too. What kind of guy just assumes? I didn't think about it because I didn't want to think about it. It was easy to just leave everything to you, and we both know I'm doing too much of that in my life now anyway, right?"

"I think I should go take these, just in case."

"Are you sure? I mean, if you are… if we, well, if it was too late, might it be bad for, for you or, you know… Hell, I have no idea what I'm talking about. I just don't want anything bad to happen."

"Maybe it's too late for that." She sounded like a very young girl, not at all like the confident happy woman he'd so enjoyed traveling with the last few days.

"Would that be so bad? I mean, the timing is a little rushed, but really, what's the worst thing that could happen?" The more he thought about it, the more the idea appealed to him. Donna was lovely. Happy Donna was beautiful. Expecting Donna? Radiant would fail to describe her.

"So we should just wait and see? You're okay with that?" She snuffled into his chest and tried to sound more like herself.

"Of course I am." He pulled back and kissed her cheeks, one after the other, then briefly kissed her lips. "In the last few days, you've graduated college, we've fallen in, or more like admitted, love, and we've been on planes, trains, boats and monorails together. We're quitting our jobs and moving to a new state where we know virtually no one except my mom and her new boyfriend. It's not like we haven't been prepared for change, either way, right?"

"You're a politician with an ego bordering on monomania, Josh Lyman, but there are times I particularly love you." She sighed, and sat down, putting the pills back in her bag.

"Josh," she asked softly, "Could I, if you don't mind, can I have just a few minutes to myself. You could go have a drink or whatever, just for a few minutes. Please?"

"Of course," he said, "Why don't you go to bed, and I'll take a little walk. I want to make a few calls anyway and I don't want to keep you up. You need your rest. Not because you, uh, regardless, you should rest some."

"Well, okay." She smiled as she got under the covers. "You sure you don't mind?"

He leaned over and kissed her again. "No, I need to walk a little. Get some sleep, and I'll be back soon."

"Mmm," she mumbled. "Well, 'kay. Hurry back."

He turned out the light and headed out towards the lounge car, looking for a quiet spot to check his messages and make an important call in private.

W.W.

"Telephone!" The call came from up stairs as John Moss was watching the season's last Packers' game on his TiVo. He'd been saving it for weeks, for a time when he had three hours of uninterrupted time. He knew they'd won, but he still wanted to savor each play. He pretended to not hear his wife calling, knowing that it wasn't going to work, but Favre had the offense moving and things looked good for another score.

"Jack? Jack, telephone!" His wife was stomping down the stairs. He sighed and paused the game. In the sudden quiet he called back to her.

"Who is it, Annie? Come on, it's Packers night."

His wife came into the den. She'd been getting ready for bed, and the long dark brown hair she usually pinned up was down in waves over her shoulders. He smiled at her despite her annoyed expression. No doubt about it- he'd married up. Christ, look at her.

"It's Donna's boss." She didn't say his name. Donna's boss was something of a sore point in the Moss household. Without him, she'd have been home a lot more over the last few years. Of course, without him she'd also still be living with that smarmy son-of-a-bitch she'd been with at UW. It was a tradeoff that was constantly reevaluated in the Moss family.

"Is it about the school? I thought she called you?" They were still shocked and pleased that they now had another college degree in the family, even if they had missed out on the actual diploma ceremony.

"He says he needs to speak with you and it won't wait. Talk to him." She jabbed the phone at him. When he took it, she stood there with her arms folded across her chest and one eyebrow raised, a pose that their daughter Donnatella had inherited virtually unchanged.

"Hello, this is John Moss." Jack tried to keep the irritation out of his voice.

"Good evening, sir. I'm sorry for calling late. I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time, sir." The man sounded nervous, almost scared. Jack sat up straighter and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the man at the other end of the phone and not on the way his wife was tapping her fingers on her arms impatiently.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Lyman? Is there a problem?"

"No sir, and please, call me Josh. I'm calling about your daughter Donnatella. I understand you and your wife have seen some stories in the press this weekend?"

Jack scowled. "I told my wife that stuff is all nonsense. If something were going on in Donna's life we needed to know about, she'd be sure we knew. And you can call me Jack, Josh."

"Well sir, uh, Jack, sir, I'm afraid events have sped ahead of news updates a little this week. I apologize and I sincerely want you and your wife to know I regret anything that may have come as a shock to you regarding your daughter and myself."

"Son, I notice that was very carefully not a denial. Are you telling me there is something to that program I should know?" Jack's eyes narrowed and he raised an eyebrow to his wife.

"Sir, I'm sorry that I could not be there in person, but there is something that I wanted to ask you and I'm afraid that I can't wait till I have a chance to come to Madison."

"Go ahead." The white blonde hairs were lifting on the back of Jack's neck, and his ruddy cheeks paled slightly. He looked at his wife, and motioned for her to step closer.

"Jack, sir, Donna and I are on a train right now heading back to DC. When we get there we're going to be very busy preparing to move back down to Orlando. Uh, moving down together, sir." Josh was trying to sound calm, but his voice was thick with nervous emotion.

Annie, who had been trying to listen in, asked loudly, "Josh, are you saying you plan on asking our daughter to move in with you when you go to Florida?"

"Oh, hello, Mrs. Moss." Josh swallowed loudly. "Um, no ma'am. The thing is, I wanted to tell you that tomorrow morning I plan on asking Donna to marry me, and I thought you should know."

"Are you asking my permission, Josh?" Jack's mouth was dry, and Annie looked like her mind was moving a mile a minute.

"No sir, I really think it's up to Donna, but I know whatever choice she makes I'll be happier knowing you heard it from me, not reading about it somewhere afterwards."

"Josh, I want to talk to Annie about this, but it sounds like you two have been through a lot recently, and we're going to have to trust Donnatella to make the right decisions. I do have one question for you: is my daughter pregnant?"

"Jack!" Annie punched him hard on his arm, shouting out, "Don't answer that Josh! It's none of his damned business!"

"That's okay, ma'am. I understand, and let me tell you honestly, to the best of my knowledge, that I love your daughter and I hope she'll marry me, but that neither of us in any way should feel obligated to take that kind of step." Josh's voice cracked a bit during this speech which made it either very emotional or a pack of bull, Jack wasn't sure which. Possibly both. Josh sounded resigned and still a little nervous, but not hesitant.

"Fair enough. And Mr. Lyman? Just so we're clear: you make my little girl cry, and I will be after you with a father's wrath, you understand?"

"Jack, I do. I just want her to be happy, sir, more than anything else in the world. Good night, Mr. Moss."

Jack hung up and commented, "You'll notice that was not precisely a denial. Politicians."

Annie, who was still fidgeting, looked at him in disgust. "You didn't tell him to call us back after he asked her, you idiot." She punched him on the arm again. "How are we going to know what she says, by reading a paper?"

"She's her mother's daughter, Annie. You'll hear. Pretty soon after, I'd imagine."

"I better." She fussed about a little while, trying to straighten up the already clean living room. She moved some throw pillows from one side of the sofa to the other, then after a moment moved them back again. There wasn't actually any mess to clean up, but habits of 36 years are not easily broken.

"I'm going back to watching the Packers. Could you get me a refill?" He held up his Green Bay coffee cup.

"As if I'm going to get you coffee at a time like this, Jack" she snorted. "I should call him back. It won't kill you to get your own coffee."

"I guess we'll find out," he sighed. Just once he'd like to have a nice hot cup of coffee and a slice of cake, and watch his game without getting up every five minutes. When Donna was living at home, she always brought him his coffee in the evenings. He wondered if she'd be doing if for Josh Lyman now for… well, for always.


	13. Sunday Early Morning

W.W. –early Sunday morning

"Josh?" Her voice was sleepy but not so emotionally drained as before.

"Shhh, hey. I didn't mean to wake you."

"No," she yawned, "I'm up. It's almost 5:30. Why didn't you come to bed?"

"I was just restless… I'm looking for something, I'm worried I packed it in the car." Josh had his backpack open and was rooting around in it.

"Do you need it now? We'll be back in DC in a few hours. Come lie down with me."

"As tempting as that sounds, love… oh, here it is." He pulled a small package, wrapped in dark blue paper, from the depths of his backpack. "I have something for you."

In a flash she was sitting up, blinking away the sleep and rubbing her fingertips across her face to wake up. "A present? For me? Josh, I didn't get you anything."

"Aside from the best week of my life, you mean?" He grinned at her, and came to sit next to her on the narrow train compartment bunk. "I was going to wait for the right time… but the more I thought about it last night, the more I wanted to do this before we got back to Washington. This, this is for you."

She took the package and saw that it was from the Mikimoto store at Epcot. As she undid the elegant wrapping, she noticed the shy look on Josh's face.

"You really didn't have to…" Her voice trailed off as the wrapping came off to reveal a small box, such as jewelry might come in. No, she thought, he wouldn't have. He couldn't have.

"Open it," he said with a husky voice.

"I can't," she told him honestly. "My hands are shaking."

He put his hand over hers, and gently opened the box. She sucked in her breath and could not exhale. She couldn't even blink.

A while gold band, very slender, with a simple emerald-cut diamond solitaire, shone in the dim light of the compartment. The edges of the band arched up to hold the diamond in a tight embrace, and the whole thing had a delicacy and grace about it that literally left her breathless.

"Okay, I'd be a lot more comfortable here if you could, you know, say something," Josh said quietly, his hands still holding hers around the box.

"I don't know what to say," she told him, slumping against him and hanging on against the whim of capricious gravity. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, Joshua."

"That's why it reminded me of you." He took the ring carefully out of the box and held it out to her between his fingers. "Donnatella Moss, will you marry me?"

"Ymph!" She said into his chest, turning to hold him in a crushing embrace.

He let his chin rest on the top of her head, letting her hair glide across the stubble on his chin. She smelled wonderful, and felt very good in his arms.

"Was that a yes?" he asked after a moment. "Because if not, I need to just hop out for a second and throw myself under this train."

"Yes," she told him, and dabbed her eyes with the hem of his t-shirt. "Yes, Joshua Lyman, yes I will marry you." She held out her hand, and he slid the ring on to her finger. It was a pretty good fit, which was fortunate given how hard it would be to resize that band.

They both just looked at the stone, glittering on her finger for a while, and he wrapped his arms around her again and held her. After a while she looked at the time and sighed.

"You awful man! You do this before 6:00 in the morning. I have about a hundred to people to call and none of them will be up!"

"Well," he admitted, "your mom said to call any time if the answer was yes. If it was no, wait till your dad has had coffee. Sam said screw the time difference, I have to call him as soon as I'm done talking to my mom."

"You talked to Sam?" She shook her head. "Wait, you talked to my mom?"

W.W.

From "The Capital Times: Wisconsin's Progressive newspaper" and Wisconsin.

Moss – Lyman

Annabella and John Moss of Madison announce the engagement of their daughter, Donnatella Moss, to Joshua Lyman, son of Ruth Lyman of West Palm Beach, Florida.

Miss Moss heads the Presidential Council on International NGO Liaison Activities, based in Oviedo, Florida and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Mr. Lyman is the Director of the Leadership Studies program of the School of Political Sciences, University of Central Florida. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.

A February 8th wedding is planned.

W.W.

_Author's Endnote: Is Donna expecting? What name did Josh give Leo to take his place? Does the wedding actually come off okay? And what was that all about with Avi Maxwell and the FBI? These are questions for another day, and another story. Book 2: "Code 208," is being rewritten and revised and should post this month. Book 3: "The Myth of Closure" is being researched and drafted now. Look for it in April. Till then, I hope you enjoyed "Magic Kingdom Come."-ReverendKilljoy_


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